MediaFlect

Reading James B. Stewart’s “Disney War,” struck by how much of the first part of the book, in which former CEO Michael Eisner and other top execcs spend their time visiting other top execs at their homes, for dinners, etc. I know it’s a schmooze-fest, and it’s all Hollywoooood, but it’s fascinating to me how even in this electronic age, the execs spend so much time doing one-to-one human relations. Now there’s a problem for media to solve.

We’ll see a pendulum swing at some point in the future. As citizen journalism like CommandPost take hold, and more and more people refer to them, at some point, there will be some rumor or innacurate coverage picked up and spread around. At that point we’ll see a move, however slight, back to edited or “branded” journalism, where people know the information they’re reading is vouched for.

Jeff Jarvis, on the same page where he notes he’s leaving Advance Media, talks about the needs of news of the future. Reminds me of panel at a Nora Paul-hosted conference at U of Minn where we reached many similar conclusions. (If a confernece is in Minnesota and no one blogs it, did it happen?). Here’s my synopsis, in brief, under which you can see our longer contibutions: the issues future journalists/editors will grapple with: Convenience - someone gets what they want, when. You, as newsperson, may not know the device the consumer is using or how they’ll use it, and, thus, will not know how your news product is consumed; portability - anything, anywhere, any time. Manipulability- true customization, personalization, data-sifting. News organizations’ pre-set rubrics become much less relevant. Ubiquitous Collection - A Webcam on every lamppost? Ubiquitous Dissemination. Ease of Use/Intuitive - Both for the news gatherers and users of the devices that receive the news. Legal/Rights Issues - Will the government control and perhaps even sell access to “events” it “stages”? (”The Gulf War, Exclusively on CNN.”) If everyone is a news gatherer, and everyone can be in any piece of it at any time, even as a micro-bit of data, what are the potential privacy and legal issues?

This is a relatively new blog of Dorian Benkoil, covering his observations on the media, etc. Recently, other posts on media can be seen at this section of PaidContent.org or my Blogger blog, which was here. I’m playing around with Blogsome (and who knows if I’ll stay?) because my good friend and Internet journalism guru-extraordinaire Sree Sreenivasan noted that Blogsome was the only place I could get categories in a blog for free. (And who doesn’t want categories?)