media140 – Page 2 – Stilgherrian

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 November 2009

Links for 22 October 2009 through 27 October 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 October 2009 through 27 October 2009, published after far too long a break. I really, really do need to work out a better way of doing this…

Nature Child | San Juan Islander: “According to family studies professor, Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland, there was a 50% decline between 1997 to 2003 in the proportion of children 9 to 12 who spent time in outdoor activities (hiking, walking, fishing, beach play and gardening).”
FreeRangeKids: “At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail.”
How far did you roam as a child? | Watershed: Educator John Larkin continues the thoughts about wrapping our kids in cotton wool.
How children lost the right to roam in four generations | Mail Online: In 1919, an 8yo was allowed to walk six miles to go fishing. Today, an 8yo isn’t allowed past the end of the street without parental escort. This article from 2007 triggered many thoughts, and I’ve glad I found it again.
Forget the young pretenders, Humans 1.0 can lead the way | The Observer: John Naughton riffs off the idea that teenagers don’t know everything and some parts of cyberspace (ugh!) are teenager-free. Although the article then says that “only” 11% of Twitter’s users are under 17 years old. And what proportion of the literate population is under 17yo? 11%? More? Less?
Podcasting Equipment Guide (2009) | Hivelogic: A nice guide to the tools needed to podcast on a budget. Yes, there’s a reason I’m looking at this. Stay tuned, as they say.
Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network | Parliament of Australia: Full transcripts of the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network public hearings, which I’m tagging for my own reference later.
What Information is “Personally Identifiable”? | Electronic Frontier Foundation: Gender, ZIP code and birth date are enough to uniquely identify about 87% of the US population. This has massive implications for publishing data sets, and for privacy policies that claim not to collect “personally identifiable” information.
Nine News twittered by seagull | TV Tonight: It’s nothing to do with Twitter, but there is a seagull. A very big seagull.
Apology for singing shop worker | BBC News: Shop assistant Sandra Burt, 56, from Clackmannanshire, was threatened with a fine for singing without a license by the Performing Right Society. However they’ve now apologised and sent flowers.
Online Ads Not Working for You? Blame the Creative | Advertising Age: A study by Dynamic Logic says that obsession about optimisation and placement is less important.
We can’t turn back the tide of internet piracy, says TV boss | Herald Scotland: “Internet piracy is merely demand where appropriate supply does not exist,” says the commissioning editor for education at the UK’s Channel 4.
Court tweets sustained but paper still lurks | ZDNet Australia: Liam Tung, who tweeted from the AFACT v iiNet trial in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney, reflects on the gaps in courtroom IT.
Beats and Tweets: Journalistic Guidelines for the Facebook Era | NPR: Yet another exploration of ethics an journalism. One point in here I really do not like, though: “You must not advocate for political or other polarizing issues online. This extends to joining online groups or using social media in any form (including your Facebook page or a personal blog) to express personal views on a political or other controversial issue that you could not write for the air or post on NPR.org.” Sorry? Work for NPR and you lose your right to participate in democracy?
Poles, Politeness and Politics in the age of Twitter | The New Adventures of Stephen Fry: Another fine if perhaps rambling essay from Mr Fry about the meaning of “influence” and accidentally gaining same. Worth a leisurely read.
Why journalism's all a-Twitter | The Walkley Foundation: The editorial chief of Sydney’s forthcoming Media140 conference goes beyond the obvious “Is Twitter journalism?” and mechanical how-to issues and explores the ethical issues of journalists using Twitter.
Twitter in the court: Federal judge gets it | CNET News: Another article about using Twitter in courtrooms, from the US an from March 2009.
Call For Opinions | Blackbeard Blog: Tom Ewing’s collection of opinions on market research and social media, “quite unsupported by anything other than grumpiness and prejudice”. The first is that “insights” aren’t Zen koans. “If you can express something that briefly, it’s probably banal.”
The internet doesn’t exist | Business Spectator: Ah, Alan Kohler! I do so love your commentaries! Here’s more of his sensible thoughts on the matter of paying for “content” on the Internet.
How Safe is the HPV vaccine? | Information Is Beautiful: A brilliantly simple infographic showing the incredibly low risk of associated with the Human Papillomavirus compared with various everyday activities.
Ultimate Goat Fansite: Do I need to explain? I thought not.

30 September 200904 November 2009

“Do Journos Do it Better?”

The reprobates in the photo are me and my fellow panellists at forthcoming the Media140 Sydney conference, where we’ve been given the topic “Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities.” Look out, folks!

From left to right, that’s 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 me.

Now I’m hoping the discussion doesn’t degenerate back into those tedious bloggers versus journalists arguments from last year. Certainly by year’s end they seemed to have faded. And we do seem to have a more switched-on panel. But we’ll see.

Actually the full conference program looks good, with everyone from ABC managing director Mark Scott and Crikey editor Jonathan Green to… oh, look for yourself.

Media140 Sydney is on 5 and 6 November 2009 at the ABC’s Eugene Goossens’ Hall in Ultimo. Early-bird bookings at $145 ~~close today~~ have been extended to 5 October.