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April 28 2012
Médias: les nouveaux codes de la campagne électorale
February 20 2012
Atelier des médias (RFI): anniversaire en famille
Voir Atelier des médias (RFI): anniversaire en famille sur Continue reading →
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January 29 2012
Journalistes et hommes politiques: à qui profite le « off » ?
January 04 2012
2011: the UK hyper-local year in review
In this guest post, Damian Radcliffe highlights some topline developments in the hyper-local space during 2011. He also asks for your suggestions of great hyper-local content from 2011. His more detailed slides looking at the previous year are cross-posted at the bottom of this article.
2011 was a busy year across the hyper-local sphere, with a flurry of activity online as well as more traditional platforms such as TV, Radio and newspapers.
The Government’s plans for Local TV have been considerably developed, following the Shott Review just over a year ago. We now have a clearer indication of the areas which will be first on the list for these new services and how Ofcom might award these licences. What we don’t know is who will apply for these licences, or what their business models will be. But, this should become clear in the second half of the year.
Whilst the Leveson Inquiry hasn’t directly been looking at local media, it has been a part of the debate. Claire Enders outlined some of the challenges facing the regional and local press in a presentation showing declining revenue, jobs and advertising over the past five years. Her research suggests that the impact of “the move to digital” has been greater at a local level than at the nationals.
Across the board, funding remains a challenge for many. But new models are emerging, with Daily Deals starting to form part of the revenue mix alongside money from foundations and franchising.
And on the content front, we saw Jeremy Hunt cite a number of hyper-local examples at the Oxford Media Convention, as well as record coverage for regional press and many hyper-local outlets as a result of the summer riots.
I’ve included more on all of these stories in my personal retrospective for the past year.
One area where I’d really welcome feedback is examples of hyper-local content you produced – or read – in 2011. I’m conscious that a lot of great material may not necessarily reach a wider audience, so do post your suggestions below and hopefully we can begin to redress that.
December 06 2011
Broadcasters press Supreme Court to allow TV, radio and newspaper acquisitions
The Wrap :: Broadcasters are urging the Supreme Court to loosen restrictions that prevent companies from owning newspapers, radio stations and television stations in the same market. The NAB argues that rather than resulting in dangerous monopolies, allowing broadcasters to own multiple news organs helps them improve their financial health. That in turn gives them the flexibility to invest in higher quality reporting.
Continue to read Brent Lang, www.thewrap.com
September 13 2011
The New Online Journalists #11: Jack Dearlove
Reviving an ongoing series of profiles of young journalists, I interviewed Leeds university journalism student Jack Dearlove about his work in data journalism. Jack works as a BA on BBC Radio York’s Breakfast show and is also a third year Broadcast Journalism student at the University of Leeds, where he is News Editor for Leeds Student Radio.
How did you get into data journalism?
I started exploring data journalism when I saw how the Guardian was publishing stories attached to the raw spreadsheets on their guardian.co.uk/data blog. I liked the way they could bring a little extra to a story by digging up a big old spreadsheet and letting people play around with it.
I’m really a spreadsheet guy, doing the classic autofilter and then ordering things by the biggest and smallest values and slowly going down each line in the spreadsheet. This can take a while but it’s the only way you can be sure you’ve seen the whole picture.
I’d like to get into ‘scraping’ but haven’t really had the time to play around with it. But any technique that means data that I might not have naturally come across is something I’d love to get the hang of.
How do you use it in your work for the BBC?
I’ve worked for the BBC for nearly 4 years and it’s something i’ve built into my role as my job has changed. It will certainly be something that I use when it comes to future job interviews though, because hopefully it sets me apart from your standard journalist.
I think my colleagues were quite sceptical at first, but I have a very supportive and data savvy Assistant Editor who’s just as keen to use the techniques as I am. So there’s an air of curiosity, as there is in many newsrooms.
How does it fit into your studies?
It doesn’t really, my course hasn’t featured much about Data Journalism over the past two years and is unlikely to in its final year. It will be something I use when it comes to ‘news days’ though, to cook up a couple of stories before we start chasing others.
The truth of the matter is that I’m quite glad it’s not taught: you can’t really force it on someone because it takes quite a lot of time and effort to get anything from, so it’s not for everyone.
Where do you hope to go from here?
I’m not really sure. I graduate in a year’s time and I’m sure I’ll just be happy for employment. Longer term though I want to be the guy that makes radio people talk about. Not just on the days when something major is happening, but day to day, I want to make radio that I’m consistently proud of and that the audience love.
What tips would you give to other journalism students wanting to get into this side of journalism?
Don’t expect it to deal you an exclusive story every time you look and remember that the data is really raw, it’s missing a lot of context. Especially with ‘expenditure over £500′ data. It’s worth remembering that a sudden drop in series of payments to a particular company after a couple of months of relatively solid expenditure could be because it’s simply dropped below the £500 mark.
Treat it just like any other skill, like going through council minutes. You’re the journalist, don’t expect anyone else to be going through that data.
July 29 2011
On air - The Next Frontier: an autism, disabilities, diagnoses radio show program hosted by @anne_barbano
The Next Frontier Radio Show :: Anne Barbano's 9-year-old son Nicholas was diagnosed with autism a few years ago. Though the diagnosis gave a name to the mysterious problems that Nicholas began exhibiting as a toddler, this comfort was short-lived. Barbano and her husband, Michael George, learned from doctors and research studies that autism has no cure and that symptoms can range from mild to severely debilitating.
Anne is host of the Radio show autism/disabilities/diagnoses program The Next Frontier. You can listen to hear live, every Thursday 6:00 pm EST on WOMM-LP 105.9 FM Burlington. A live stream via Internet is available. You find the link below. Note: The Next Frontier will be on hiatus in the month of July, returning to its regular spot in August (so back next week!).
Details of the show - The Next Frontier, www.theradiator.org
Live studio stream - Live, www.theradiator.org
Follow her on Twitter - Anne Barbano
Website - www.livingtheautismmaze.com
July 16 2011
FAQ: How can broadcasters benefit from online communities?
Here’s another set of questions I’m answering in public in case anyone wants to ask the same:
How can broadcasters benefit from online communities?
Online communities contain many individuals who will be able to contribute different kinds of value to news production. Most obviously, expertise, opinion, and eyewitness testimony. In addition, they will be able to more effectively distribute parts of a story to ensure that it reaches the right experts, opinion-formers and eyewitnesses. The difference from an audience is that a community tends to be specialised, and connected to each other.
If you rephrase the question as ‘How can broadcasters benefit from people?’ it may be clearer.
How does a broadcaster begin to develop an engaged online community, any tips?
Over time. Rather than asking about how you develop an online community ask yourself instead: how do you begin to develop relationships? Waiting until a major news event happens is a bad strategy: it’s like waiting until someone has won the lottery to decide that you’re suddenly their friend.
Journalists who do this well do a little bit every so often – following people in their field, replying to questions on social networks, contributing to forums and commenting on blogs, and publishing blog posts which are helpful to members of that community rather than simply being about ‘the story’ (for instance, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ questions behind the news).
In case you are aware of networks in the middle east, do you think they are tapping into online communities and social media adequately?
I don’t know the networks well enough to comment – but I do think it’s hard for corporations to tap into communities; it works much better at an individual reporter level.
Can you mention any models whether it is news channels or entertainment television which have developed successful online communities, why do they work?
The most successful examples tend to be newspapers: I think Paul Lewis at The Guardian has done this extremely successfully, and I think Simon Rogers’ Data Blog has also developed a healthy community around data and visualisation. Both of these are probably due in part to the work of Meg Pickard there around community in general.
The BBC’s UGC unit is a good example from broadcasting – although that is less about developing a community as about providing platforms for others to contribute, and a way for journalists to quickly find expertise in those communities. More specifically, Robert Peston and Rory Cellan-Jones use their blogs and Twitter accounts well to connect with people in their fields.
Then of course there’s Andy Carvin at NPR, who is an exemplar of how to do it in radio. There’s so much written about what he does that I won’t repeat it here.
What are the reasons that certain broadcasters cannot connect successfully with online communities?
I expect a significant factor is regulation which requires objectivity from broadcasters but not from newspapers. If you can’t express an opinion then it is difficult to build relationships, and if you are more firmly regulated (which broadcasting is) then you take fewer risks.
Also, there are more intermediaries in broadcasting and fewer reporters who are public-facing, which for some journalists in broadcasting makes the prospect of speaking directly to the former audience that much more intimidating.
June 15 2011
Michael Skoler: Community, not audience, is a new business model
Editor’s Note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its summer 2011 issue, “Links That Bind Us,” which focuses on the role community plays in journalism. We’re highlighting a few entries that connect with subjects we follow at the Lab, but go read the whole issue. In this piece, Michael Skoler writes about the (monetary) value of community.
A few years ago, Public Radio International coaxed its most popular host, Ira Glass of “This American Life,” into digital cinema. Ira had already expanded his famed radio program into a traveling stage show that toured a dozen cities a year. With this new idea he would perform one show and beam it live to hundreds of movie theaters around the United States at the same time. Efficient, yes, but would it be appealing, Ira wondered.
After all, people came to see him and even hoped to meet him. Radio is an intimate medium, and with Ira, so is a live show. What would be appealing about watching him on a screen from thousands of miles away in the company of a hundred strangers? This wasn’t a sporting event — the main draw for digital cinema — it was journalism, storytelling journalism. And people could already watch Ira on DVD.
So would they come and pay $20 a ticket?
They came in droves. More than 30,000 watched the first digital show at hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada in the spring of 2008. The next year, 47,000 turned out. They came to be with other fans, experiencing something they all loved together. The success wasn’t so much the power of Ira, but the power of his community.
May 29 2011
Japan - Radio, TV, newspapers, Twitter? Media's role in responding to earthquake disaster
Daily Yomiuri :: Professor Shiro Segawa, Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, conducted a preliminary survey about the media and its role in responding to the earthquake and tsunami disaster March 11. He and his research team called on two shelters and interviewed 23 victims in total. The main question to them was which form of media—newspapers, TV, the Internet (PC or cellular phones), or radio—they used a frequently right after the earthquake, one to two weeks after it, and one month after it, respectively.
Findings. On the whole, the most common answer was radio immediately after the earthquake (car radios or battery-operated radios) and newspapers after one week since the earthquake. It is generally thought that Twitter and other social media have played an active role in responding to this earthquake disaster. This only seems to be the case, however, in areas where the Internet was available and without power outage.
Study and findings: continue to read Shiro Segawa, www.yomiuri.co.jp
May 24 2011
“Expanding the palette of public radio”: Marc Maron’s WTF moves from podcast to program
Last month, we posted an interview Josh did with The Sound of Young America‘s Jesse Thorn. During their conversation, Thorn mentioned that he was working on trying to bring his friend Marc Maron‘s interview show WTF to public radio sometime in the “late spring of this year.”
Well: It is done. Last week, WTF was picked up by PRX (FTW!), thus making it available for distribution to stations around the country. And a number have already signed on: WTF has been licensed so far by New York’s WNYC, Chicago’s WBEZ, and, as of yesterday, Austin’s KUT — with more, Thorn told me, on the way.
WTF both is and isn’t standard public radio fare. On one hand, it’s two people sitting behind microphones, one interviewing the other, a form as old as the medium. On the other, it’s far less formal and more sprawling than what you’d get from a Terry Gross or a Diane Rehm. Maron interviews comedians in each episode — Conan O’Brien, Robin Williams, Patton Oswalt, Louis C.K. — in loose conversations that can extend well beyond an hour. The format and Maron’s abilities have led to surprisingly open and revealing interviews. As Ira Glass told The New York Times, “People say stuff to him that you can’t imagine them saying to anyone else. And they offer it. They want to give it to him. Because he is so bare, he calls it forward.”
As part of the shift to a public radio format, podcast episodes had to be compacted and reshuffled to fit into one-hour time slots. There was also some bleeping necessary; WTF suggests “sensitive listeners should be advised.” Glass, who championed the show’s move to radio, insisted on keeping the name intact, acronym moralists be damned. (Check out Glass’ promos for the show below. You can hear all 10 episodes, pulled from the best of WTF’s archives, at PRX’s website.)
Thorn said he hopes that WTF can be part of a move to broaden the kind of content — and the kind of show formats — on the public airwaves. “I think the type of interview that Marc does is something that’s new to public radio,” he says. His interview style signals a shift not because it’s profane or vulgar — “which I think is what, sometimes, program directors assume about it” — but because it is raw and real in a way “that you don’t hear almost anywhere in broadcasting — outside of, to some extent, your semi-exploitative television interviews” (Oprah, Barbara Walters, etc.).
That emotional, human-to-human connection can be a rarity within a platform whose definition of professionalism is often bound up in the interviewer’s ability to express both empathy and detachment at once. (Paging Jay Rosen.) “I don’t think it’s something that has existed in public media in the context of an interview show — and especially on a public radio show,” Thorn says. He likens Maron’s interviewing style to that of…Howard Stern, since, say what you will about the shock jock, “one thing that he’s capable of doing brilliantly is finding emotional revelations in his guests. And he does that by being so honest about himself that the guest can’t help but be honest about themselves.”
That authentic element, Thorn notes — the closeness, the rawness — is part of what has made shows like This American Life and Radiolab into successes, particularly with younger listeners. And when Glass made his push to promote WTF into a show, furthering that trend was part of the idea:
It’s high time we on public radio harvest the very best of the podcasts out there and bring them to our audience. This is a great, easy, audience-friendly way to do that.
It’s about, essentially, “expanding the palette of public radio,” Thorn says: about providing listeners with new ways to understand the intimacy of the spoken word. “I think that Marc recording the show in his garage, with his books, feeds that strength of audio as a format,” Thorn says. “It’s like having something whispered in your ear. It’s automatically very intimate.”
April 14 2011
Love me, love my NPR: Public radio listeners can show off their loyalty
NPR executives have been known to brag that theirs is just about the only news organization to show up in people’s personal ads. For example: “I am in need of some intelligent male company…I am an avid reader, npr listener, talkative, curious and always up for trying something new.”
Media companies salivate over that kind of loyalty and identification with the brand. “People not only have an affinity for NPR but an affinity for each other, as listeners,” Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s general manager of digital media told me. “We’re the only news organization where public trust has increased over the last decade.”
While there is as yet no dating site for public radio nerds — though Wilson said the idea has come up — his development team recently whipped up a way for listeners to show off their support and discover friends with similar passions. A new Facebook app called I Heart NPR asks fans to put themselves on a map with thousands of others. Users can play games, such as Name That NPR Theme Song (I earned four-of-four virtual tote bags, thank you), and then share the results with friends. Secret games will be “unlocked” with every 100,000 new users, Wilson said.
NPR is already among the most “liked” news organization on Facebook, with 1.4 1.6 million fans. So what’s different about this? “The NPR Facebook page is first and foremost an extension of our news brand,” Wilson said. The I Heart NPR app, he said, is for fans of the organization itself and what it represents to them — the NPR personalities, the weekend rituals, the shared values that bring together like-minded people on a first date.
At the top of the Facebook app is a Twitter-inspired #gopublic stamp, which the network uses as branding on all social platforms. Local stations can also use the stamp and embed the Facebook app on their own sites.
I Heart NPR was conceived, Wilson reassured me, prior to the controversy that forced out two NPR executives and intensified a debate about federal funding of public broadcasting. (It looks like that funding survived the 2011 budget, by the way.)
Wilson said this is a lighthearted experiment and he chose not to define any hard goals for it. “We’re not trying to promote this in an aggressive way. We’ve put it out there and if it takes off, fabulous.” A half-dozen programmers, working part-time, built the app in about two weeks.
NPR’s digital team works on a bold schedule: Programmers work on two-week coding cycles to encourage rapid development. These so-called sprints encourage both failure and innovation. It’s what allowed NPR to develop its iPad app in one month, or two sprints, just in time for the iPad’s launch in April 2010. (That app just surpassed one million downloads.)
I asked Wilson, who used to run digital operations at USA Today, why it can be so difficult for other large organizations to churn out new projects — and how he’s able to do it now. “From my perspective, it comes from long, hard experience doing it badly,” he said. “Resources are always tight and so there’s probably a fear of burning too many cycles on something that either doesn’t go right.” But he said the rapid-release schedule encourages unconventional projects like I Heart NPR, and very few ideas are swatted down.
“The digital media staff here is about half the size of the one I had at USA Today and probably produces twice the output,” he said.
March 09 2011
From Argo to R&D: Vivian Schiller’s legacy of innovation at NPR
With the departure of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller today, and the January resignation of Senior VP for News Ellen Weiss — not to mention threats of the loss of government funding that have been escalating in the past couple of months — things look like they could be pretty scary for NPR at the moment.
In the wake of all of this turmoil, though, it’s worth taking a look at Schiller’s and Weiss’s legacy. Under their leadership, NPR has been doing things that have been helping to set the standard for innovation across the industry — in broadcast and beyond.
I say this after being involved with NPR on the research end since 2008, after the Knight Foundation gave NPR $1.5 million to retrain 400 digital journalists, and gave USC $2.4 million and UC Berkeley $2.8 million to help the transformation happen. I worked with Knight Digital Media Center head Vikki Porter and USC professor Patricia Riley in studies of NPR that included field research, interviewing, and leadership workshops at USC.
Here are some of our findings about NPR under Schiller and Weiss:
• Continued audience growth, not just on traditional airwaves, but in on demand forms, such as through podcasting and streaming radio
• Exposure of large numbers of staff to multimedia training and digital news concepts
• The incorporation of digital news staff into the traditional radio newsroom
• The relaunch of the NPR website
• The opening of the NPR API for programmers and anyone else to experiment with — making it possible for a volunteer firefighter, who happens also to be an NPR fan, to create a streaming mobile app called NPR Addict
• The development of an active social media team, which can both create social media content from NPR and also harness everything from audience Flickr efforts to user comments
• The willingness to experiment with an in-house social media platform on NPR’s community page
• More followers on Facebook — 1.5 million at the moment — than any other media organization, Schiller has said
• The expansion of the NPR brand beyond radio to include visuals (such as flash graphics), video, photography, and — a challenge for any radio or broadcast organization — text
• The active presence of NPR Labs, an R&D team inside NPR that can bake new ideas into initiatives throughout the news organization and at other public radio stations
• The launch of project ARGO, a network of public radio digital sites, which represents a commitment by NPR not to leave member stations in the lurch as it moves forward
Now let’s take a look at the outlook for NPR, something I heard articulated by Schiller when she spoke at USC in November:
• NPR understands that its mission is to increase “interactivity,” as Schiller put it, and to be “more respectful of citizens” in its work — to continue, as she put it, to “put the audience first”
• NPR will continue to give people context and avoid tabloidization
• NPR wants to compete in new ways with other news outlets through new technology
• NPR wants to address the fact that “not all listeners are invited to the party” and to focus on making it more inclusive
• NPR wants to give people on-demand content
• NPR has a goal of “transparency through new technology” — an openness to giving people everything from access to its API to the ability to share and comment and provide feedback
In all of this, there has been something of a revolving door that never stopped in the plans for making NPR an innovator in digital news. In 2008, Ken Stern, NPR’s CEO, left the organization, in part because, some say, his vision for NPR digital news didn’t do enough to include member stations. Maria Thomas, Senior VP for Digital Media also left. Jay Kernis, the Senior VP for Program (and one of the creators of Morning Edition) departed, as well.
But in came fresh blood, such as Kinsey Wilson, who moved from USA Today to become the general manager of digital media, and NPR executive editor Dick Meyer, who helped Schiller and Weiss build their vision.
You can look to NPR’s work just over the past week to see that vision brought to life. And anyone who has been paying any attention to the uprisings in the Middle East knows that NPR is not just a radio station; it has become a curator for information around the world, thanks to Andy Carvin (@acarvin) and his efforts to curate for the rest of us the on-the-ground efforts.
NPR has been hailed by many media activists, scholars, and generally anyone concerned with the future of news as a model for both innovation and for quality reporting. The Downie and Schudson report from late 2009, for instance, praised NPR’s new website as well as its growing audience and its capacity to do journalism on a local, national, and international level — in a comprehensive way that few news organizations still can.
The question is whether all of this progress can continue, given today’s shakeup. But if all the revolving doors haven’t stopped NPR so far, it’s possible to continue to think that it will keep moving forward.
February 11 2011
Why an expansion of low-power radio stations could mean good things for community news
The future of local radio news may involve more than just the letters N, P, and R.
Last month, President Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act, a new law allowing the expansion of noncommercial stations around the country though new low-power radio licenses. Running on 100 watts (about the same as an exceptionally bright lightbulb), these stations are intended for nonprofits, schools, and churches to create community programming. While this may inspire visions of contemporary Christian music and school board meetings popping up alongside the best hits of the ’80s, ’90s, and today, it could also mean more locally produced journalism.
Consider the commonalities low-power radio stations have with local news startups: A defined coverage area and audience; a model that requires engagement with the community; a need for financial support from businesses and a mission to serve the public interest.
“Low power radio really fits well into the model of covering local issues,” Ian Smith of the Prometheus Radio Project told me. “It’s a hyperlocal medium.”
Very hyperlocal, considering that a 100-watt signal won’t carry very far, but it could be just enough to cover a small town or a neighborhood in larger cities. Smith, a development and communications associate with Prometheus, said low-power stations directly reflect the communities they are in, whether its keeping zydeco music alive or voicing the concerns of Latino farm workers.
Smith said a number of low-power stations have set out to not just provide cultural programming but respond to gaps in local news coverage and offer alternatives to traditional media. In that sense, community radio stations join the growing network of nonprofit journalism startups as well as locally oriented initiatives from NPR like Project Argo and Impact of Government.
But what separates community radio from its larger public and corporate cousins is the same thing that could make it work as a vehicle for citizen journalism. “One of the things that makes low power radio so unique is its so participatory,” Smith said. “You can participate in the production, not just the consumption.”
Though low-power radio offers a ready conduit for people concerned about issues within a community, it also can impose certain disciplines helpful to journalism. In order to put a program on the air, you need to know how to run a soundboard (or some basic audio recording tools) and have the ability to put together a cohesive program. Dean Graber, who works at the University of Texas’ Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and has researched low-power radio, points out that some stations are already attempting to guide citizen journalists. KPOV in Bend, Ore., for instance, created a journalism handbook for volunteers. As Graber wrote on his blog: “For people worried about the state of U.S. journalism, now is the perfect opportunity to consider and experiment with new forms of non-profit, community-based journalism, on the time-tested medium of radio.”
While some community radio stations may wish to take on the mantle of news provider, it would be wrong to expect their programming to be similar to that of traditional news outlets, Graber told me over email. “Some news and information programs will follow existing formats for delivering news and information over the radio, including Pacifica and Free Speech News. Other programs will thoroughly innovate their news and information programs,” he wrote.
As malleable as the programming is, it’s likely the ubiquitous nature of radio will also help low-power stations grow and find an audience. As Smith points out, radio is largely free (okay, yes, once you buy the radio) and accessible everywhere, at home, at work, or in the car. Although streaming radio complements that and increases the potential to reach broader audiences, the focus, as always, remains local.
“We think it’s important to maintain the localism of this medium in any way that is relevant to their community,” Smith said. “It’s part of the public commons and should be serving the public good,” he said.
Image by William Li used under a Creative Commons license
February 10 2011
Jason E. Klein: Print newspapers have a place in a tablet-heavy future
Editor’s Note: In the increasingly competitive world of journalism, it’s easy to start declaring winners and losers. The reality will likely be somewhere in between; just as television didn’t kill radio, there’ll be room for lots of different kinds of news outlets in the Internet age.
So today, we’re going to feature two pieces by people whose medium of choice some have recently forecast to come up short: print newspapers (facing threats from tablets) and homegrown local news sites (facing threats from national networks).
Here, Jason E. Klein — president and CEO of the Newspaper National Network — argues that tablets aren’t going to sweep away the print newspaper business any time soon. NNN describes itself as the “primary nationwide sales and marketing network for newspapers, both print and digital” and counts nearly all American newspaper companies as shareholders.
In 1979, an English new wave band called The Buggles hit No. 1 on the singles chart in 16 different countries with its debut single “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Two years later, it was the first music video to be shown on the new network MTV just after midnight on August 1, 1981. After almost thirty years have passed, The Buggles are largely forgotten, and radio is still around.
The new rage is tablets, and many believe tablets mean the death of print, and especially newspapers. Not in 30 years, but very soon. Forrester CEO George Colony recently told a gathering of media leaders that tablets were “the nexus of media” and would overtake e-readers, and ultimately the web. Wow!
Even the most hard-core newspaper junkies envision a world when tablets replace print, but they see that world far off. Maybe thirty years or so, maybe a hundred, give or take. So George and the newspaper junkies see a similar fate — it’s just a question of timing. I’m not sure when George thinks the last tree will go down for newspaper pulp, but I’d guess that he thinks the tipping point is soon, in the next two to four years. Maybe he’ll read this and weigh in.
Let me define what I mean by tipping point. There are still almost 1,400 daily print U.S. newspapers. While circulation and revenue has contracted, very few print newspapers have gone out of business. Since 1980, the number of print newspapers has declined at a fairly steady rate of about one percent per year — far fewer than the number of magazines to fold over that time. At the moment, newspaper companies are coping with the changes to their business. To me, the tipping point is when print newspapers are shutting at a rapid clip and the number of papers drops by half from today. When will the tipping point be?
The most predictable underlying trend is generational. Print readers are dying off, and younger adults read print at half the rate of older adults. But people are living longer, and 60 is the new 50. If the aging of the population is the dominant driver of the demise of print, you can model the numbers to show that print will be around for 30 years, or 50, or more, and George will be wrong.
But print junkies are changing their habits, even if their anti-aging creams, whole grains, and yoga are halting the ageing process. If the tipping point is at hand, as George seems to believe, it will be driven by the conversion of print junkies to tablets and not by Gen Y.
Tablets — which right now really mean just the iPad — are a delightful way to read newspapers. Ask most anyone who is not a luddite, has an interest in current events, and is a regular iPad user and you’ll get the same response. I am in that camp; I even hugged my iPad last week, once. However, there are still many print junkies who see the advantages of print newspapers, and relish their time with newspapers spread out in front of them, a cup of coffee at their side, and a smile on their face. I am in that camp too. From a usage standpoint, each fills a need, and the formats each have reason to coexist. I am a happy camper in both worlds. Even in a pre-tablet world, paid print newspaper circulation is over 40 million at the same time as 100 million people can and do read the same newspaper content on the web — for free.
Keep in mind that the forecast for tablet penetration is explosive, even more so than expectations for MTV in 1981. Tablet prices will come down, and people will have tablets in different rooms, in different colors and flavors. Corning makes the glass for tablets (now that’s a business!) and recently forecast 180 million tablet sales by 2014. With all those tablets around, it’s reasonable to expect that millions of print junkies will hug their iPads and use their newspaper apps. This means opportunities for newspaper publishers for new advertising and subscription revenues. Unfortunately for publishers, newspaper content engines depend on the economics of print since digital dimes don’t replace print dollars.
Will the print junkies jump ship as tablets multiply like rabbits? Is it a foregone conclusion that the tipping point of 700 closed newspapers follows right after Corning sells 180 million sheets of glass?
I don’t think it has to be. Just as radio has found its niche, print has its place as well. As Clay Shirky notes in his recent book, citing research by Clay Christensen and Gerald Berstell, you need to ask: What job are customers hiring your product to do? Print fills a different need; the experience of handling and reading a print newspaper provides an intellectual and leisure experience that offers an alternative to the hours spent on digital devices. With its broadsheet format, print is an ideal vehicle for both scanning and in-depth reading, and reading a newspaper from front-to-back is a complete experience a tablet environment finds hard to duplicate. Our research with dual print/digital newspaper consumers also suggests that consumers still trust print more than digital. While the tablet has invaded print’s turf, it’s not filling all the needs that print does.
How newspapers are marketed will make an enormous difference. It will control (a) the rate at which print junkies adopt the tablet format of newspapers and (b) the rate print at which junkies abandon print. The net of those rates will determine if the tipping point is imminent or a generation away.
Newspaper publishers seem to be headed to a paid model for tablet newspapers. Publishers realize that if tablet newspapers are free, their adoption rate by print junkies is constrained only by tablet sales, which will go through the roof. If tablet newspapers are free, and print newspapers cost $30-40 per month and up, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? As the music industry learned, it’s very difficult to compete with free. Nonetheless, some publishers are planning for free tablet newspapers, banking that advertisers’ current infatuation with tablet ads — and premium pricing — continues, and hoping that the print junkies don’t notice.
Most newspaper marketers are sweating the details. To bundle or not to bundle? Pursue a clever mix of free and paid? Extract a premium price at first from early adopters, then lower — or price low at first to encourage adoption, then raise? Vary price by geography, or usage, or time of day, or news cycle? Some publishers favor a bundled pricing plan: one price for access across all formats. Apple is not making the choices any easier as it looks to embed the App Store in all transactions.
So will tablets kill the newspaper star? Tablets are clearly invading the world of newspaper print junkies with long term consequences. But from a consumer standpoint, print and tablet formats can coexist for as long as generational factors allow. Each fills a different set of needs. Print clearly has its core of enthusiasts. It’s up to the marketers — at newspaper publishing companies, and at Apple and other intermediaries — to find the right value equation for each format.
January 31 2011
Audio/visual: Adding captions to NPR to reach a text-based audience
Things to take into consideration when trying to caption a radio newscast: how to convey sarcasm, irony, or seriousness; how to represent sound or ambient noise that’s important to a story; how to differentiate the voices of multiple hosts and guests.
Oh, and how to enable captioning on a medium that typically comes with no visuals.
All of these are things NPR Labs has been working on for several years as they try to bring captioned radio into mainstream use. This fall, they’ll begin a pilot program to test out captioned radio at stations around the country through display-capable digital radios and other devices like the Insignia Infocast. The hope is that, one day, captioned radio could also be viewed on mobile apps and tablets.
“We’re trying to build this to work for all public radio and create a large enough model that it can be emulated by others,” Mike Starling, executive director of NPR Labs, told me.
The idea of captioning is much more obvious for television, where the visual medium provides a ready display for text. (Closed captioning dates back to the early 1970s at Boston’s WGBH.) But radio is just as critical a source of news reports and emergency information, Starling said. NPR has come a long way in offering transcripts of their programs online, but they still come with a delay. NPR Labs, which works on software and transmission technology, has been experimenting with captioned radio as digital broadcasting has expanded and radio has burst out of its audio-only bounds. As more radio signals became digital, it allowed for transmission of something like a speech-to-text algorithm that creates a captioning feed. A description from NPR Labs:
Audio recorded in any of NPR’s studios is sent to Master Control, which then routes this audio to both PRSS and to a captioner. The captioner can be either a stenographer or a re-speaker, like the BBC uses. Re-speakers listen to audio and re-speak what they hear into a voice recognition program that has been trained to their voice. This increases the accuracy greatly over speech-to-text programs that are untrained, and removes any background sounds from field reports that might confuse the program.
From there, captions would be sent to stations over the Internet or by satellite and available to read on display-enabled radios, on the web, or on Internet-enabled devices.
Starling said a big reason captioned radio is advancing now is because technology is making it easier to put screens in front of the estimated 25-30 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. That may be part of the reason NPR was looking to make friends with Apple and Android developers at the most recent Consumer Electronics Show. Tablets like the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab are the right size for viewing live text, Starling said. But the price of those gadgets means they’re not widely available, which is why Starling considers something like the Infocast or Sony Dash good options that run less than $200. (NPR also developed a prototype car radio display with Delphi, that could act as a screen for turn-by-turn navigation or captions. See the video above for more.)
“It’s perfect timing for us to do the initial work on how to do captioning cost effectively,” he said.
More important than the technology is translating newscasts and other programs in a way that is faithful to content but also understandable for deaf audiences, Starling said. NPR worked with researchers at Gallaudet University to find the best ways to relay non-spoken information in stories, and what factors can interfere with reading captions. In one test, they found that people liked seeing avatars of NPR personalities like Robert Siegel or Michele Norris in captions, but that the extra visuals cut down on the retention of information from stories, Starling said.
“It’s like interpreting for a different language,” he said. “You have to figure out how to best translate this into something else so the full semantic impact is made in articulating a concept.”
The largest trial run of captioned radio was on election night in 2008 when 150 people at five member stations tested captions on a large display, an online stream, and a slide show. Starling said they now want to get a sense whether captioned radio can fit into everyday life and what problems may arise for listeners or stations. Though they’re just scratching the surface of what could be done with captioned radio, Starling said he can see a future where broadcasts could be visualized in different ways, possibly to incorporate images, graphic or video, made available anywhere on any device.
“We’ve got enough to bite off in doing faithful transcripts before we explore how this new artform could be more fully exploited for the intended audience,” he said.
January 28 2011
Sudan Radio Service Solicits Feedback via Text Messaging
From January 9 to 15, Southern Sudan held a referendum to decide if the region should become an independent state. Although results have not yet officially been announced, estimates indicate that the referendum will pass with an overwhelming number of pro-independence votes. (Read MediaShift's recent report from Simon Roughneen on the ground in Sudan.)
It's essential to keep citizens informed of new developments during the voting period -- and one of the best ways to reach large numbers of people is through radio. The Sudan Radio Service, which has been operating since 2006, recently began incorporating mobile technology into its work in a two-pronged approach to monitor the reach of their broadcasts and to solicit reader feedback.
Jacob Korenblum of SoukTel, the company that designed both mobile services, explains that the service, which is based out of Nairobi, Kenya, and Juba, Sudan, wanted to make sure that their broadcasts were being heard by their target audience.
"The power of radio is that it can reach millions of people; the challenge of radio is that you don't know if people are listening," he said. "So I think that there was a big need for ways to get feedback from listeners across southern Sudan."
Survey
In order to monitor the reliability and clarity of the radio broadcasts, SoukTel designed a survey for field workers in ten different regions where the Sudan Radio Service is heard. Previously, the broadcasts were sent out of Nairobi over shortwave radio frequencies, but the new station in Juba uses an FM signal. The branching survey, available in both English and Arabic, leads the field workers through a series of questions to describe the sound quality of the programs and, if the sound quality is poor, potential reasons for the interrupted service. The information is sent back to the main radio centers where the data is used to track trends in service interruption and to make changes in problem areas. Written in PHP and SQL, the survey is available to field workers entirely through SMS so it works on basic phones.
Korenblum said the reason for this was to make sure the field workers could easily participate. "The whole point of our platform is that it's bottom-of-the-pyramid," he said. "So it's all SMS-based, you don't need to have a Java client or an Android handset...Frequently the field staff have only the most basic phones, and we never ask for our partners to go out and purchase different hardware -- you can use whatever handset you have."
The field workers are remunerated with air time at the beginning of the month to cover their expenses for completing the surveys. (The Sudan Radio Service is a project of the non-profit organization the Education Development Center and is funded by USAID). Since the project launched in early September, they have run the survey program ten times in each region.
Listener Feedback on Programs
The second part of the mobile technology project launched in December is meant to capture feedback from listeners about programming. Since the Sudan Radio Service has programs covering everything from news broadcasts to soap operas, getting feedback from listeners about the type of content they find useful is important.
Announcers of different programs promote the feedback line, and users text in their replies, some of which are read on air. Although the Sudan Radio Service broadcasts in 12 different languages, Korenblum said that most of the responses have been in Arabic, with a few in English.
So far, Korenblum estimates that the Sudan Radio Service has received roughly 400 SMS responses; below are a few examples of some of the responses (translated from Arabic with the names of submitters removed):
> "This is very reliable news. I hope your news gets all over the world. We listen to your radio station and it's very clear in Saleh valley."
> "I like to listen to SRS programs because of the variety in programs, and the accuracy in news. The Sok Almawasera series talks about real problems and give us real messages for our life. Also thanks for the Al-Asmo program, and thanks for all the services the radio is providing."
> "Very good news service. I hope you invite a speaker from the army or the camps and increase the broadcasts. Please also provide us with a program that's hosted by refugees."
> "I appreciate your dramas on the subject of al-Kojour in Darfur. They reflect the traditions and habits of Darfur in a very realistic way."
Listener responses help the radio station determine which programs are enjoyed and valued by their listeners; it can also help the station plan for future broadcasts that meet the needs of Sudanese residents and the Sudanese diaspora within range of the Sudan Radio Service's broadcasts. Combined with the frequent tests of the station's broadcasting capabilities, the Sudan Radio Service can provide reliable information that reaches the greatest audience.
"It's really about creating a dialogue between radio listeners and the content providers of the programming, and mobile is a fantastic way to do that," Korenblum said.
January 27 2011
How WNYC Used Texts from Citizens To Map Snowstorm
The radio station WNYC is creating on-air and online stories using two things that are very familiar to people in the Northeastern United States: mobile phones and snow.
A snowstorm over the holidays was the heaviest December snowfall in six decades. It dumped up to 20 inches in many parts of New York City. The story quickly became one of snow removal and how the city was not removing the snow as quickly as people had hoped.
Jim Colgan and the WNYC newsroom wanted to get a sense of what was happening on the streets. Problem was, there was no good or easy way to do this. The station couldn't rely on the city for real-time information, and reporters couldn't get to many of the areas. The answer was to have the listeners share their own reports and stories, via mobile phone.
"The Takeaway" is broadcast from WNYC and distributed by Public Radio International. The program is no stranger to mobile technology. "Part of what we are trying to do with the show is be more multi-platform and use interactive tools," Colgan said. The program has used mobile technology in sourcing through texting endeavors and frequently receives SMS reports from subscribers ahead of a given show. "The Takeaway" and WNYC also reach out to audiences on Facebook and the Internet, but Colgan said the most direct response comes from connecting with people via mobile phone.
How WNYC Reported on the Snowstorm
To report on the first major snowstorm, WNYC asked a very simple question: Has your block been plowed? On-air, they asked people to text the word PLOW to the shortcode 30644. Once they did so, that person received a message asking for their address and their response to the question.
After this, the person was sent another message asking if they would like to contribute more details, in their own voice. If the person responded to this SMS message, they were connected to a voicemail line at WNYC and could describe how the snowstorm and roads were affecting them. The station received hundreds of reports, especially for the first snowstorm, and close to 100 people left voice messages with detailed stories.
Some stories included issues of access to emergency services, getting to and from work, and the ensuing trash buildup after the storm.
A Multi-platform Approach
The station took a multi-platform approach to the snow story. In addition to mobile and voice responses, it also mapped the reports. Because they had good, clean data from the mobile texts, the team was able to map the information via Google Fusion to create a visual sense of the situation.
The day after the initial snowstorm, when the city had made some headway in clearing snow, WNYC asked for more mobile reports from the public and made a second-day map. On the third day, the station texted everyone that had already participated and asked about their current situation. (Here is a link to all three maps.) At this point, most people texted that local roads were clear, and they were finally able to get out. Visually, this was evident between the three different maps.
A Texting Service Can Be a Big Help
One key to the team's success was to partner with a texting service, in this case, Mobile Commons. "The Takeaway" and WNYC had worked with the company in the past, and knew what they could do based on prior experience, Colgan said. Mobile Commons had the infrastructure in place to help launch the campaign quickly.
"It was about 20 minutes between the time we decided to do it and the time we could promote it on the air," Colgan said.
All WNYC had to do was set up the campaign and the key word. This timeliness is key, especially in breaking news situations.
The Mobile Commons system also worked well in that the texted data came in and could be easily exported via CSV to the Google Fusion map, including a public link to the MP3 of a citizen's voice report. So, for everyone that called in to leave a message, a site visitor could click on the map and link to hear the detailed audio story associated with that report.
Not Meant For Every Story
On the day of my interview with Colgan, fresh snowfall was predicted for the region. I asked if the PLOW campaign would be promoted that day. Colgan warned against overusing a service like this.
WNYC doesn't want to badger people into sending reports, he said. If it serves the reporting, it is justified. But if it's evident that streets are being cleared, the reports are obviously not useful.
After the December snowstorm, it became clear that trash was not being picked up, so the station called upon the people who had already texted in about snow removal to see if their trash was being picked up. In this case, the trash reports were not mapped, but the program did get voice stories about the situation to play on air.
During a second storm, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was under pressure to show that snow removal was under control, the station did the same thing. This time, the story became one of how quickly streets had been plowed.
"Some people even complained about how many times their streets had been plowed," Colgan said. "But it's really great to know that we have it as a resource the next time this happens."
This mobile, multi-platform approach to newsgathering and storytelling has potential for uses outside of snowstorms, too.
How 'The Takeaway' Used Texts from Citizens To Map Snowstorm
National morning radio program The Takeaway is creating on-air and online stories using two things that are very familiar to people in the Northeastern United States: mobile phones and snow.
A snowstorm over the holidays was the heaviest December snowfall in six decades. It dumped up to 20 inches in many parts of New York City. The story quickly became one of snow removal and how the city was not removing the snow as quickly as people had hoped.
Jim Colgan and his team at "The Takeaway" wanted to get a sense of what was happening on the streets. Problem was, there was no good or easy way to do this. The program couldn't rely on the city for real-time information, and "Takeaway" reporters couldn't get to many of the areas. The answer was to have the listeners share their own reports and stories, via mobile phone.
"The Takeaway" is broadcast from WNYC and distributed by Public Radio International. The program is no stranger to mobile technology. "Part of what we are trying to do with the show is be more multi-platform and use interactive tools," Colgan said. The program has used mobile technology in sourcing through texting endeavors and frequently receives SMS reports from subscribers ahead of a given show. "The Takeaway" also reaches out to its audience on Facebook and the Internet, but Colgan said it has the most direct response when it connects with people via mobile phone.
How "The Takeaway" Reported on the Snowstorm
To report on the first major snowstorm, "The Takeaway" asked a very simple question: Has your block been plowed? On-air, they asked people to text the word PLOW to the shortcode 30644. Once they did so, that person received a message asking for their address and their response to the question.
After this, the person was sent another message asking if they would like to contribute more details, in their own voice. If the person responded to this SMS message, they were connected to a voicemail line at "The Takeaway" and could describe how the snowstorm and roads were affecting them. The program received hundreds of reports, especially for the first snowstorm, and close to 100 people left voice messages with detailed stories.
Some stories included issues of access to emergency services, getting to and from work, and the ensuing trash buildup after the storm.
A Multi-platform Approach
The program took a multi-platform approach to the snow story. In addition to mobile and voice responses, it also mapped the reports. Because they had good, clean data from the mobile texts, the team was able to map the information via Google Fusion to create a visual sense of the situation.
The day after the initial snowstorm, when the city had made some headway in clearing snow, the Takeaway asked for more mobile reports from the public and made a second-day map. On the third day, the program texted everyone that had already participated and asked about their current situation. (Here is a link to all three maps.) At this point, most people texted that local roads were clear, and they were finally able to get out. Visually, this was evident between the three different maps.
A Texting Service Can Be a Big Help
One key to the team's success was to partner with a texting service, in this case, Mobile Commons. "The Takeaway" had worked with the company in the past, and knew what they could do based on prior experience, Colgan said. Mobile Commons had the infrastructure in place to help launch the campaign quickly.
"It was about 20 minutes between the time we decided to do it and the time we could promote it on the air," Colgan said.
All "The Takeaway" had to do was set up the campaign and the key word. This timeliness is key, especially in breaking news situations.
The Mobile Commons system also worked well in that the texted data came in and could be easily exported via CSV to the Google Fusion map, including a public link to the MP3 of a citizen's voice report. So, for everyone that called in to leave a message, a site visitor could click on the map and link to hear the detailed audio story associated with that report.
Not Meant For Every Story
On the day of my interview with Colgan, fresh snowfall was predicted for the region. I asked if the PLOW campaign would be promoted that day. Colgan warned against overusing a service like this.
"The Takeaway" doesn't want to badger people into sending reports, he said. If it serves the reporting, it is justified. But if it's evident that streets are being cleared, the reports are obviously not useful.
After the December snowstorm, it became clear that trash was not being picked up, so the program called upon the people who had already texted in about snow removal to see if their trash was being picked up. In this case, the trash reports were not mapped, but the program did get voice stories about the situation to play on air.
During a second storm, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was under pressure to show that snow removal was under control, the program did the same thing. This time, the story became one of how quickly streets had been plowed.
"Some people even complained about how many times their streets had been plowed," Colgan said. "But it's really great to know that we have it as a resource the next time this happens."
This mobile, multi-platform approach to newsgathering and storytelling has potential for uses outside of snowstorms, too.
January 11 2011
How Mapping, SMS Platforms Saved Lives in Haiti Earthquake
This article was co-authored by Mayur Patel
Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti last January, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving several million inhabitants of the small island nation homeless. Though natural disasters are common, the humanitarian response this time was different: New media and communications technologies were used in unprecedented ways to aid the recovery effort.
A report released today by Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities, with support from Internews and funding from the Knight Foundation, takes a critical look at the role of communications in the crisis and recommends ways to improve the effectiveness of utilizing media in future disaster relief efforts. (The Knight Foundation is a major funder for MediaShift and its sister site MediaShift Idea Lab.)
In the weeks after the crisis, Haiti quickly became a real world laboratory for several new applications, such as interactive maps and SMS texting platforms. In the aftermath of the quake, these tools were used for the first time on a large scale to create dialogue between citizens and relief workers, to help guide search-and-rescue teams and find people in need of critical supplies. The report, Lessons from Haiti [PDF download] (co-authored by Anne Nelson and Ivan Sigal, with assistance from Dean Zambrano), recounts the stories of media participants, technologists, humanitarian organizations, Haitian journalists and response teams involved in the relief. Many of these players were first brought together to share their experiences at a roundtable convened by the Knight Foundation and Internews last May.
Notable Innovations
"The most notable innovations to emerge from Haiti were: the translation of crowdsourced data to actionable information; the use of SMS message broadcasting in a crisis; and crowdsourcing of open maps for humanitarian application," according to the report. A dizzying array of new media and information technology groups, Haitian diaspora networks and media development partners were involved in these initiatives (see the infographic below). Although these innovations had varying levels of impact in Haiti, they showcased the potential for use in future crises.
One of the most notable developments was the application of Ushahidi, an online crisis mapping platform that was born only a few years earlier in Kenya. Ushahidi had already been used to map political violence, but it had not yet been used in the context of large-scale natural disasters. When the earthquake struck, an ad hoc coalition quickly took shape, anchored by a group of graduate students at Tufts University in Boston.
The Ushahidi teams, supported by translators from the Haitian diaspora community in the U.S., gathered information from news reports and individuals about the most acute needs on the ground: rescue, food and water, and security, among others. The coordinates were placed on a map and made available to rescue and relief teams.
Soon they were able to include SMS texts in their bank of information. A few days after the quake, Digicel, one of Haiti's leading telecom companies, agreed to offer a free short code (4636) for SMS texts in service of the relief efforts, with the help of InSTEDD, a technology focused humanitarian organization. The four-digit code enabled cell phone users to send free messages to central information centers about missing persons and emergency needs. SMS messages and direct reports from Haitian citizens began to flow within four days of the quake.
OpenStreetMaps, an open community of volunteer mappers, joined the effort to create online maps of Haiti's improvised and unnamed neighborhoods. These maps became the standard reference points: Users included not just information technology platforms such as Ushahidi, but also large providers of humanitarian services, such as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).
Not Necessarily a Success Story
However, the CDAC Report cautions against calling the Haitian experience a "new media success story," as some of the approaches -- attempted for the first time -- faltered. The crisis threw together volunteer technology communities and professional humanitarian organizations, without a common language and operating procedures. A lack of coordination and understanding of how to use and integrate the new tools into existing disaster relief structures further complicated efforts on the ground.
In addition, new media efforts did not preclude the importance of traditional media. As in past crises in the developing world, radio continued to be the most effective tool for serving the information needs of the local population. With Haiti's newspapers and television broadcasters knocked out of production for the first few weeks after the quake, radio provided a heroic lifeline. One Haitian station, SignalFM, was able to broadcast continuously throughout the crisis, and worked closely with both international relief organizations and the digital innovators in support of the population. Popular radio host Cedre Paul reached his audience via Twitter as well as on the air.
"We have always known that one of the best ways to communicate with affected population in crises is through radio broadcasts," said Mark Frohardt, vice president of humanitarian programs for Internews, a media development organization. "We found in Haiti that innovative technologies not only had an impact on information delivery on their own, but also greatly enhanced the reach and effectiveness of radio."
Still Work to be Done
For all the welcome innovation, the report makes it clear that digital humanitarian action has a long ways to go. One of the big obstacles to the Haiti effort was the lack of pre-existing connections between the large government and international institutions and the new tech activists. Large institutions tend to mean weighty protocol, some of it based on long and bitter experience. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for example, has strict rules of confidentiality, which has allowed it to play a uniquely useful role in conflicted and tense situations, while the open source community's hallmarks are spontaneity and transparency.
Nonetheless, the connections among the various sectors advanced in Haiti, stimulated by a common desire to help, and there are many signs that new synapses are emerging. For example, CDAC has made some progress bridging the gaps between the humanitarian and media communities. The report calls for more of this kind of cross-sector collaboration to improve future recovery efforts. Specifically, it recommends that media, new technology developers and humanitarian agencies (both UN and international NGOs) engage in joint preparation and simulation exercises for future emergency responses.
We should not forget that Haiti's crisis is far from over. Many donors have yet to fulfill their commitments for reconstruction funds, and much of the rubble remains. New digital initiatives are still appearing; one promising new effort from MIT is an online labor exchange for Haitians called Konbit.
Disasters will continue to occur. But their damage can be mitigated by relief efforts that are well-planned and executed in concert with the local population. Digital media technologies offer a unique opportunity to advance these goals with the right on-the-ground coordination. As the report notes: Haiti demonstrated "the culmination of a vision and the beginning of the hard work of implementation."
Anne Nelson is an educator, consultant and author in the field of international media strategy. She created and teaches New Media and Development Communications at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and teaches an international teleconference course at Bard College. She is a senior consultant on media, education and philanthropy for Anthony Knerr & Associates. She is on Twitter as @anelsona, was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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