Posts Tagged ‘new media’

Relax, it’s just a video until proven otherwise

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Is there a need to classify web video the way we classify TV content (e.g. shows, series, specials, dramas, comedies, etc.)?

No.*

Ok, let me elaborate a little.  Drew Keller put to us students in the MCDM’s Summer Web Storytelling class the same question, after being inspired by an article about the subject from Tod Sacerdoti at the Online Video Insider.  In his post, Sacerdoti explored the question: what is the most-watched show on the Internet?  What even defines a “show” online?  Drew also pointed us to an article in the New York Times discussing the growing popularity of longer-form videos on the web.  The TV business has after decades established standard terms for categorizing and classifying its content – serials, series, dramas, sitcoms, sports, primetime, latenight, and so on and so forth.  This serves many purposes, the most notable of which is to help measure viewership by timeslots and types of programs and sell advertising accordingly.  This doesn’t really work on the web, with a major exception (see asterisk below).

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Posted in convergence, new media, old media, web video | View Comments

Video Integration at Traditional Print Media Website: The Issaquah Press

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

About the Issaquah Press

I grew up on a little hill called Cougar Mountain, in the vicinity of Issaquah, Washington, where I also went to High School, did plenty of swimming in the community pool, and generally loitered away my youth.  I was first exposed to the Issaquah Press during my ambling about in this booming but still quaint Seattle bedroom community.  So, this local newspaper, a subsidiary of The Seattle Times and around for well over 100 years, has, like so many small pint papers, taken itself beyond its 16,000 plus circulation and on to the web (for more, see the About page at the Press).  Now, The Issaquah Press is by no means a major production, but, like many small town print outlets, the Press stands to gain from the death of old media through hyperlocalization, assuming it approaches the concept wisely (see: hyperlocal blogging).  By my estimation, this little newspaper is doing a lot of things right in its print edition.  This especially includes its video presence and integration.

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Posted in old media, web video | View Comments

Responding to Heidi Sinclair on Media and Brand Supremacy

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

http://heidisinclair.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/brand-supremacy-and-media-the-new-brand-in-media-could-be-nike/

Heidi Sinclair argues that big brand names like Nike or Home Depot could be in an excellent position to enter the media business as content generators.  Nike could be the next ESPN, Home Depot could tackle the home improvement news realm, etc.  This is in keeping with Paul Gillin’s contention that a company like Staples could be a content source for information and resources related to small business, and so forth.

I completely, respectfully disagree with both Gillin and Sinclair.

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Posted in advertising, mass media, new media, old media | View Comments

Reading reflections: the trouble with mass media

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Question 1 – In Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks, we read the following statement in chapter 6:

The core role of the political public sphere is to provide a platform for converting privately developed observations, intuitions, and opinions into public opinions that can be brought to bear in the political system toward determining collective action.

The Internet is increasingly becoming that sphere’s platform.  However, policymakers have tended to enact legislation which seeks to repress activity that great numbers of people within this sphere otherwise view as legitimate.  This is generally perceived as reactive to these activities’ tendencies – they violate previous policy effected for traditional media.  In a recent article published in the Times of London regarding online film piracy (piracy being one such example of a violating activity), Becky Hogge with the Open Rights Group observed:

When you have six million people breaking the law, it’s the law that needs changing, not the people.

How do we change policy to better support new public opinion while still protecting the privileges of those whose past rights are becoming violated, essentially, by new public opinion?

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Inspiration: storytelling and the importance of old media

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Though we exist in a time of great media upheaval, where the Internet has made available so much story for so little effort, millions are still drawn to long-form traditional narratives.  We still go to the cinema, the bookstore, the concert, the play, the big game, the event.  Though so much power can be packed into a media snack – a tweet, a blog post, a text message, a sentence, a word, or even an acronym (LMAO anyone?) – we still sit down for super-sized media meals.  Something must be inspiring us to pull up that chair and sup from the old media table.  Inspiration seems to be the answer.  What is the importance of inspiration to storytelling?  In our digital world – full of bombardment from massive narrative abstraction and fragmentation, where so much story content is being communicated in so many bits and bytes and packets like bullets from a fiber-optic Gatling gun – we still find time to stick the old media morphine drip in.  This happens when we do something so archaic as watch an hour-long drama on network television, spend nine innings at the baseball stadium, or, gasp, read an entire Harry Potter book cover-to-cover. (more…)

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Posted in entertainment, old media | View Comments

Reading reflections: looking at the Internet

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Perusing an in-depth study written for business decision makers on just exactly why people use the Internet, I have developed these three questions, one of which is an older question I posited on Twitter but I wish to reinstate here:

Question 1 – Why is it useful for researchers to continually develop quantitative analyses of Internet behavior and use, and what challenges are presented therein, considering the rapid-fire evolution of Internet technology?  Is it a waste of time; will publications already be out-of-date at the moment of publication, much like the latest hot software often seems to be?

Question 2 – New media is not experienced in the same way old media is, though there is major overlap.  Why do we so often apply old media styles of critical analysis to new media, thereby discounting the new?

Question 3 – From my old tweet late last year: Is the Internet in any way to blame for some of the current economic climate, and if so, how?

Some of my thoughts herein have been spurred by the aforementioned article, referenced below.

Reference

Stafford, T. F., Stafford, M. R., & Schkade, L. L. (2004). Determining uses and gratifications for the internet. DECISION SCIENCES, 35(2), 259-288. Retrieved from Blis database.

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Is New Media contributing to the economic recession?

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Is New Media contributing to the economic recession in America? Is it even a factor, and if so, how? I was reading Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily earlier, and she posted an entry on yet another PR firm moving to embrace emerging platforms to stay afloat in the social media era. People are losing their jobs to unintended crowdsourcing, in this case, due to the web’s impact on word-of-mouth and brand/persona marketing. Agencies have to compete with an entirely new beast. For example, would Tom Cruise’s image be as tarnished by his relationship with Scientology if it wasn’t for the chatter on Digg, the Wikileaks, and the activities of the Anonymous movement?

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about New Media’s economic impact. Piracy, net neutrality, e-commerce, web leaks, etc.; do these and other elements of the age in which we live completely subvert traditional avenues of cash flow? I gather the consensus is somewhere close to a “yes”. So, if the idea is social media is going to do your work for you because you can no longer control messages, that agencies, studios and other media entities require less overhead and fewer employees, technology is streamlining manufacturing and production methods, customer support is outsourced overseas or provided by the community at-large, and while everyone is willing to pay for delivery platforms they incipiently expect free content (oh, and who the heck really looks at advertising? I mean, really?) then I guess that means no one is spending money and no one is making money. What do you think?

The economy and social media is no where near my area of study or expertise, so I’m just putting my thoughts out there. Tell me what you think I should know. Or, tell me I’m clueless. I can handle it either way.

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Posted in new media | View Comments

How They Flipped the Media: Interviews with New Media Personalities – Drew Curtis, FARK.com

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Today, I am beginning what I anticipate will become a regular series of short interviews with web personalities. These short, three-question typewritten interviews will be cross-posted here and to the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media’s blog, FlipTheMedia.com. I want to answer the question: How are these well-known new media or Internet personalities changing the face of media? What are they doing to “flip the media”, as we say in the MCDM program? Generally, I will ask the same three questions of each person interviewed. So, as you read below, you will be able to see what those questions will regularly cover. My first subject is Drew Curtis, founder of the popular on-line news aggregator FARK.com.

Image from NPR.org

Drew Curtis is the creator of the on-line news headline aggregation and social news sharing site FARK.com. According to the site, Fark began in 1997 as a vanity site where Curtis posted an obnoxious but humorous picture of a well-endowed squirrel. I’ll say no more about the squirrel. In 1999, Curtis converted the site in to a place that readers could share news articles from across the web with one another. It was a way to get the news-consuming public to share perspectives and expose the often deplorable practice of journalists reporting “news” that simply doesn’t warrant the privilege of being called “news”. ‘Fark’ was a word Curtis coined to label the glut of sales and publicity-driven non-news that’s out there. Submitters to the site can re-write their own witty headlines and attach them to the articles they’ve linked, and forum threads for each article are established for people to leave commentary and engage in discussion. These threads themselves are often a hotbed of meme-centric content and image sharing as well as opinion-shaping commentary. Social media sites like Fark are changing not only the way people develop, share, and communicate opinions on topical subjects, but they’ve also proved the web’s power to help filter the real from the rubbish. As the site’s ‘About‘ page spells out, CNN and Fox News are two of the biggest corporate entities to traffic the site. Perhaps journalists at both of those networks are watching the things users of Fark are saying about the very stories they publish. Without a doubt, Fark has established itself as a major player in on-line journalism. Below are the three questions I sent Curtis, and his candid responses.

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