Journalism 3.1b2 Dan Gillmor's talk at O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference, 2003 Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- Update to last year's ETCON Journalism 3.0 talk. I'm working on a book about this, and events outpace publishing. Journalism's new world: * Ubicmp * New reporting tools * Anyone can be a reporter 9-11 -- immediate webpages, quick web spring-tolife: email, sat photos online Afghan American circulated email about 9-11 Trent Lott's segregationist nostalgia -- story stayed alive partially due to bloggers, partially due to email activists Shuttle Columbia disaster -- realtime notes on the disaster. Weather radar images circulated online, long before TV got it. Space program junkies/vets posted speculation that journos saw at the same time as everyone. It's going from a journo-lecture to a journo-seminar or conversation. "We can fact-check your ass" My readers know more than I do: this is the future of journo At PC Forum, Joe Nacchio whined about running a telco monopoly. It got blogged and a reader emailed him with a link to the story about Joe pulling $Millions out of the company while the stock tanked. Blogged it immediately, and the audience's mood chilled perceptibly, as the news rippled through the room. New toys: suitcase sat systems (expensive, soon to be in all our hands), camphones. Realtime tracking of embedded reporters in the map, with "click here to send additions" New tools: * Newsreaders: need a mechanism for identifying which are most authoratative * RSS * Wikis -- NASA asked people to send home photos of shuttle disaster. A lot of fakes and crap, but a lot was useful and helped NASA. The BBC asked for pix from readers/viewers during the antiwar demos. Self-assembling newsrooms: volunteers pulled together EVERYTHING about the Iraq invasion. Both pro- and anti-, but it was hard to tell the difference. Multimedia blogging: Joi Ito's New Years Eve photos taken with phones that were auto-posted to a blog. -- Trust questions are larger in new medium * What's true? * Hot can you verify? * Will we retreat to "quality?" -- New choices for the subjects of journalism (the "covered") * Judo journos -- WashPo's post-9-11 series included an interview with Rumsfeld, followed by Defense Dept posting the full interview with Rumsfeld. The public could decide. When both parties tape and transcribe, whose transcription is definitive? * Ray Ozzie's blog. Mitch Kapor and Ray Ozzie both document their companies/projects better than journalists do. * New corporate policies: who inside can keep a blog and what can go on it? Groove has a formal policy detailing this. Lawyers will try to stop you, esp in public corps -- they'll be written by the same person who writes Barbie's blog -- Democracy and an informed public * Concentration of media is dangerous -- fewer voices, bland journos, undue corporate influence * But big media do vital work -- investigation, covering city council, ear to the community If this makes big media not economically viable, what will fill those niches? -- Financial Model is still uncertain No one knows how to make money No one knows if this will hurt big media Korean OhMy News gets most stories from readers, with staff factcheckers, etc. Helped change the Korean election -- first interview from new president was with OhMy. Model for the future we can't afford to ignore. Gizmodo/Gawker: Nanopublishing. Weblogs covering subjects too small for the mainstream press to cover. Amazon affiliation pays money. Raises question of whether they can be independent of Amazon. This is way of starting mini-mags that are revenue positive out of the gate. Back in Iraq: "Blegging" -- blog/begging. Asked for contributions to go to Iraq and cover the war. Raised the money, went to Iraq. Covered teh war. -- Big problem: How Hollywood Sees the Internet: Read only, broadcast, we decide you watch * New media entrants are thwarted -- How can geeks help? * Better read-write net tools (wsywyg editors) blog/email middleware, cameras, streaming P2P. PDA/phone/cams can post to the web in realtime. * Get active: Fight for user rights, support vendors, call and write elected officals. We can't write off the political system or we lose. -- Q&A I don't get audioblogging. Most people speak worse than they write. It's linear. Hard to skim. I'm going to play with it -- reading the worst press-release of the week aloud, emoting, and audblogging it. Cool to get something in realtime. I'm all for it, but it's hard to edit. A continuous feed from a satphone isn't interesting. My first drafts suck. I believe in editors. Journalism is a high-margin business -- you can't expand your reach forever without being undercut by competitors. The "embargo" system of holding off on disclosing content from press-releases is breaking down, as is the thoughtfullness it yeilded. OTOH, there are lots more sources to get info from. I got lots of useful feeback -- overwhelmed with useful feedback -- from posting the outline of my book for public commentary. People told me to let us have a conversation around the outline, so that it's multidirectional.