Media – Page 70 – Stilgherrian

18 November 200917 January 2010

Weekly radio spot on ABC Statewide NSW

Yesterday I joined presenter Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide for the first of a few regular chats about social networking and social media and things Internettish.

Statewide is broadcast on ABC Local Radio throughout NSW from 1600 to 1800 weekdays, except in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and wherever else they have their own local drive-time program.

Yesterday we talked about the etiquette of “friending” on sites like Facebook and whether it’s OK to refuse a friend request, where you draw the line between your personal and professional life, how people spread the news of the September dust storms for themselves and Rickrolling, amongst other things.

The program isn’t streamed on the Internet, alas, but I did a cheap-arsed recording using my MacBook Pro’s built-in ~~speaker~~ microphone [doh!], and I’ve posted the audio below. I’ll see if I can get a proper audio split next week.

I’ll be joining Paul every Tuesday afternoon at 1615 through until 15 December.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:27 — 20.0MB)

[The radio interview is probably ©2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don’t archive them I reckon it’s fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to Statewide and encourage you to listen.]

11 November 200911 November 2009

Murdoch’s wrong about Google

Crikey logo

I reckon Rupert Murdoch’s plan to block Google from indexing News Corporation stories is daft, and I said so in Crikey yesterday with a piece they headlined Dear Rupert, this is how the internet works. Google it.

In brief, my commentary is that people don’t really get their news in a monolith any more, neither the daily newspaper or the nightly TV bulletin. Instead, they gather it from all over in little pieces. If you want people to find your stories, those stories need to be in the indexes.

Crikey editor Jonathan Green has also pointed out the stark difference between News Corporation and Google. I reckon News needs Google more than Google needs News.

Jason Calacanis has a different theory, that News will do an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Bing.

“Want to search the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and 3,894 other newspapers and magazines?

“Well, then don’t go to Google because they don’t have them!

“Go to Bing, home of quality content you can trust!”

Which might work if News Corporation were the only supplier of general news. Which it isn’t. And which point I make in my Crikey piece.

07 November 200907 November 2009

Media140: How I’ll be responding

Whew! Media140 Sydney was exhausting and several kinds of wonderful despite some irritation. Many thanks to Julie Posetti and Ande Gregson and Sarah Allen and everyone else.

Oh, a thousand loose ends to tie up! How will I respond?

I’ll make only a superficial pass through everything today, ‘cos I have other commitments. Mostly that’ll be reviewing all the open tabs in my web browser and quickly reviewing my messages on Twitter and adding things to my to-do list for later.
As I do that, I’ll link to everything I find. You can follow that on my Delicious links tagged “media140”. I’ll also post the more significant notes on my Twitter stream.
While I’m doing that, I may post quick drive-by comments on other people’s blogs, but mostly I’ll leave them for a couple of days.
I’ll also be compiling notes for follow-up posts. One will expand upon my own presentation, which is already getting interesting comments. Others will reflect upon other people’s presentations and the various discussions.

If you want me to expand upon any specific issues raised at the conference, please let me know in the comments.

Further process notes will be added as I go along, in the comments to this post. Or not. It’s going to be one of those days…

05 November 200920 January 2024

Media140: What do journos do better, exactly?

[This is my presentation for the Media140 Sydney panel “Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities”. This is being posted here automatically, at 5pm, just as the panel is scheduled to start. Given that sessions earlier in the day may cover similar ground, I may well re-word things as I go.]

“Do journos do it better?” Do journos do what better? I think this is actually the more interesting question: What is it that journalists actually do in our society?

Or, to stick with the question, what do they do in “social media communities” — although as I’ll explain, all communities are “social media communities”?

Now if I were presenting an Oscar I’d start by quoting the dictionary. “The Macquarie Dictionary defines ‘journalist’ as ‘someone engaged in journalism’.”

Very helpful.

However “journalism” in turn is glossed as “the occupation of writing for, editing, and producing newspapers and other periodicals, and television and radio shows”.

So the question as stated is meaningless. Of course journalists are better at “It” — journalism — because they’re the ones doing it. If you’re not a journalist you’re not doing journalism, therefore you’re not merely bad at it, you’re not even doing it at all!

04 November 2009

Media140 starts tomorrow, and it’s streamed

I’ll be at the Media140 Sydney conference all day Thursday and Friday. If you’re not going, you can still watch everything on the live stream.

I’m taking part in a panel starting at 5pm Thursday, Sydney time: Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m hoping this moves beyond the stale “bloggers vs journalists” (non-)debate.

My fellow panellists are freelance journalist, columnist and blogger Mia Freedman; new media consultant and recovering journalist Bronwen Clune; Valerio Veo, who heads up online news and current affairs at SBS; social media consultant Laurel Papworth; and late addition Dr Lawrie Zion from La Trobe University.

The moderator is Julian Morrow, co-founder of The Chaser, so I suspect they’re looking for a lighter, end-of-day discussion — particularly as there’s a more serious-looking panel earlier in the day called Social Media: Death or Salvation of Professional Journalism?

(I’m not sure why it can’t be both, death and transformation, but still… every headline has to be a binary opposite to turn it into winners and losers. Sigh.)

My own 5-minute rant is summarised in this tweet:

Who cares if journos do It better if It is outdated and no-one wants It? Whatever “It” is. Journalism ain’t newspapers, radio or TV.

Yes, it’s quite deliberate that “It” is capitalised.

The Twitter hashtag is #media140, and I daresay I’ll be posting snippets as it all unfolds. Stay, as they say, tuned.

01 October 200913 May 2012

Am I John Birmingham’s inappropriate Muse?

I seem to have some really odd Special Powers. I can walk into a strange pub, buy the last few tickets for the meat raffle, and win — much to the chagrin of the regulars. I can also create inappropriate mental images which then persist.

Like “masturbating to tentacle pr0n”.

Yesterday, I made an offhand comment on Twitter to writer John Birmingham (pictured), who had the misfortune of having to watch the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion special last night.

This morning, his column Hey, it wasn’t that bad, quotes me by name.

It is, as I say, a Special Power.