Media

“Mainstream no more” is tough pill to swallow

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As we come to the end of May, two things with huge implications have shown themselves.

THE FIRST was the Wall Street Journal’s faux pas, trying to force a set of rules on their journalists who’ve started adopting social media into their work flow. Just one of the rules, that ‘Business and pleasure should not be mixed on services like Twitter‘ sounds like it was written by someone who woke up yesterday. Or didn’t hear about the ‘95 Theses‘ published ten years ago. Not this one, but in this book!

THE SECOND was the launch of a company called Blink.lk. It’s a new media company in Sri Lanka, launched by a former journalist and longtime friend Tyron Devotta. (Full disclosure: I am partly involved in it, at least in sentiment.)

One of their first posts on the blog –that has fittingly preceded the main web site–was called “Mainstream No More.” It’s written by a staffer, a former reporter. She expresses the struggle this switch involves. Today, anyone in the storytelling business has to get under the hood of social media and see what makes it so compelling to the audience. Or as Jay Rosen aptly called them, “the people formerly known as the audience.”

Quotes for the week ending 30 May, 2009

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“He texts during dinner at restaurants and while walking down the street and twitters at red lights while driving.”

Reader at New York Times, commenting on how people who who would never be so rude as to talk on the phone at a restaurant, have different rules for using Twitter

“Britain’s mums told us where to stick the artificial ingredients. And it wasn’t in the bottle.”

Ad for Sunny Delight, running in Britain’s newspapers, as recointed by Jonah Bloom of AdAge, who suggests marketers need to apologize first. To which one reader responded:

“The first financial institution that apologizes will be apologizing for an entire industry for years of greedy pay packages, excessive “innovation”, disregard of risk, tricky offers & excessive political lobbying. Their customers will likely not be so forgiving as the Brits when they chuckle about Marks & Sparks reducing the price of big bras.”

Advertising Age

“It’s hard to understand how Cheney and Kyl could make statements like this with a straight face…”

Steven R Corman, at ASU’s Hugh Downs School of Communication, commenting on the former vice president and the senator from Arizona’s dismissal of Guantanamo prison being a strategic communication tool for Al Qaeda

“We used to call people who embraced this sort of behavior workaholics. Now we call them crackberries.”

Jim Shea, on how Boomers make way  for ‘weisure’ time –fitting fun around work, rather than the other way around.

“…it most definitely wasn’t named for Bing Crosby.”

Fast Company, on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, that is positioned as a ‘decision engine’

Quotes for the week ending 23 May, 2009

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“It’s an interesting use of technology, but I can’t help but feel a bit ‘eeewww!’ about this.”

Twitter user on hearing about surgeons in New York tweeting through a kidney surgery

“The word “campaign” has become the pariah of social marketing. Preferred alternatives include terms like “program,” “initiative,” or even “conversation.”

David Berkowitz, in MediaPost, about the word (borrowing from George Carlin) that will “infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.”

“Think of it as an early warning system.”

Dan Greenfield on a new tool called Tweet Cloud he has developed for PR and marketing, to make better use of Twitter

“As if there is a lick of difference between those split hairs.”

Arizona Republic editorial on Nancy Pelosi.

“I really hope we don’t get shut down.

Ross Luippold, editor in chief of Texas Travesty, about a fake Twitter Account the student humor magazine had created on behalf of University of Texas at Austin president, William C. Powers Jr.

“1 billion applications served, 35,000 applications available and more than 30 million devices in market.”

Advertising Age on how mobile advertising –app-vertising– is going to change.

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but these honorary degrees are apparently pretty hard to come by. So far I’m only 1 for 2 as President.”

President Obama, at his second commencement address this year, at Notre Dame University, with a snide reference to his visit to Arizona State University last week.

Quotes for the week ending 16 May, 2009

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“I’m OK.”

Roxana Saberi, Iranian-American journalist who reported for NPR, who was freed from Iranian prison this week.

“But the president I worked for always wanted it short. He thought about people sitting in the audience on a hot day…”

Mark Salter, who has written commencement speeches for Senator John McCain, commeiting on on what president Obama’s speech at Arizona State University would be like.

“It was a shock … we knew the list was coming, but we didn’t think we would be on it.”

Regina Alexander, whose parents own a Chrysler dealership, on the news of the closure of five Arizona dealerships.

Have camera, will report (esp if biggest story falls in your lap)

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It was just last summer, that the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU was picked as one of the four top J-schools for ABC News’ multi-media bureaus on campuses.

Barely a year later, they got an opportunity to report on a story that anyone in the media business would give their right arm for.

Watch This: Check out this report by a student. Using slick editing (clever use of the Valley’s new Light Rail with roof-top solar panels in backdrop!) and wide perspectives, this story captures the sense of expectation before the president paid a visit to ASU.

Tweet This: If you know of a student interested in the changing media landscape –I know at least two– here’s a challenge by ABC Campus News, looking for roving multi-media savvy reporters

Live streaming meets interactive

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Today’s economic summit, for the Greater Phoenix Economic Summit, GPEC hosted here at Decision Theater proved to be truly interactive, in more ways than one.

GPEC_1On the expected level, there was interactivity between business leaders and the media.

But while all this was happening, the camera that you see here was live streaming video made available to a web audience. We used BitGravity for this. The BitgGavity feed was embedded in a dedicated web page. At one time we tracked more than 600 people on that site. This extended audience got to interact with the speakers through an embedded chat program, and via a polling tool.

In an adjacent  conference room –call it the social media hub— I was part of the team watching the live web stream. Someone from the GPEC comms team would forward the questions to the Drum via Blackberry. All this, as we tweeted and blogged the event.

Photos taken during the event were immediately uploaded to Flickr -you can see them on the right of this page- and TwitPic.

Quotes for the week ending 9 May, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Gaze tracking is well-established … In the future, the whole image could also be panned left or right as the gaze approaches the edge of the screen.”

Gadgets and how we may use them, in BBC story on Science Beyond Fiction conference in Prague.

“The effects of the swine flu epidemic have been felt in Hollywood.”

Access Hollywood on an e-mail spam message that claimed Madonna had caught the virus.

“Moving from the digital world to print as everything else moves in the other direction may seem contrarian. But people want physicality, especially as more and more of our lives are lived virtually.”

Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb, a profitable print-on-demand company that has sold $30 million worth of books in 2008.

“Integration has long been talked about as the holy grail of brand communications. Socialization of media warrants finding it, and fast.”

Chris Perry, executive VP at Weber Shandwick. In Advertisng Age.

“…the greatest facilitators of human conversations, its building itself as a brand based on emotional bonds and trust in a shell of social , web 2.0 services.”

johnhorniblow, talking of Facebook, responding to the above article

“Forever is a word people aren’t used to hearing from marketers. But forever is good. If you could keep every customer you get forever, you’ll be in business for just as long.”

Rohit Bhargava, about the United States Postal Service’s use of a ‘forever stamp’ at the current postage rate, and it would be valid many years later, irrespective of price increases.

“Be warned. It’s me uncensored.”

Megan McCain, on her blog about her use of Twitter. Megan, daughter of John McCain is seen as the new voice of the Republican party. She will publish a book on this subject soon.

“They should be the ones writing the tweets – no ‘ghosttweeting’.”

Linda Vandevrede at ValleyPRblog.com, about CEOs use if Twitter. The full report is on Ryan Zuk’s presentation about Twitter.

Radio was a ‘conversation’ before it became a buzzword

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This morning I was sitting in the control room of a KJZZ, the local NPR station here in Phoenix, watching a live radio call-in show in progress. It suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks : a control room in radio is anything but.

(This happened when the guy in the control room was told that one of the mics was dead, even though all the buttons had been punched.)

controlroom_dtI’ve been in and out of control rooms . We do have one at the Decision Theater; many years back I trained as a radio producer at the BBC. But in an environment where we require people to interact, a control room is a misnomer. We control the feeds but not the outcomes. We control the back-timing but it’s left to the audience to fill the dead air. We control the lights but not the light bulb moments…

To this end, radio is a lot more elastic than we give it credit for. The best producers and hosts want you to loosen up and even ‘break’ the format. To me as a listener, that’s what makes it such a great experience, when it is not scripted all the way. When Bill O’Reilly stormed out of an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, she lost control of the show, bit it made great radio. (She rebroadcast it.)  When the guests take over, something’s working.

So back to the studio. Before the show the producer, Paul Atkinson, told us to make sure we treat this like a conversation, not an interview. Think about that for a second.

A conversation, not an interview. Where have you heard of this before? That’s right, by those (like me) who promote social media tools. The phrase is actually ‘a conversation, not a lecture‘  heavily influenced by the Cluetrain Manifesto. Since 1999, this has been infecting other one-way media as well.

Yes, there are still talk shows like this and this, that are built around the cult of the show host lecturing -hectoring– the audience. Public Radio, on the other hand, has interactivity in its DNA. The callers can change the channel, but they keep calling in to change the direction of the show.

Just two random examples of where this radio virus has spread:

  • KCNN – a station that has embraced citizen journalism
  • BlogTalk Radio — the uber example of citizen-powered, citizen produced radio, in a new skin

Sidebar: Since Sunday the 3rd was World Press Freedom Day, I would like to tip my hat to radio for being the medium that has brought a rich spectrum of voices into the conversation.

What if there were no reporters (to cover the swine flu)?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

So we all take news for granted. We get annoyed when a story is hyped, we get upset when it is ignored. We complain that it is one-sided, we write angry emails to the editor when the news is opinionated.

But what if –just what if– an editor had to cover a big story, and there was no reporter left (due to a downsized staff) to cover it?

This anecdote, a long piece, is definitely worth a read whether you are on the production of consumption of news. Here’s a glimpse:

Editor-in-chief: Timmy! It’s Bowes down at the Clarion, we need you to do a story for us.

Flannagan: (Moans)

Editor-in-Chief: What’s up? You don’t sound good.

Flannagan: I think I got the Swine Flu

Editor-in-chief: Sheesh, you should go see a doctor.

Flannagan: Freelance. No insurance.

Thanks to Kerry Fehr for the link.

Quotes for the week ending 2 May, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden

“Biden takes train after warning family to beware of confined spaces…”

Headline in ChicagoTribune.com on White House damage control over Joe Biden’s statement.

“The swine influenza outbreak makes Twitter more useful and somewhat useless, at the same time.”

Wayne Kurtzman, Media Bullseye

“Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought.”

José Ángel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister

“Yes. And NO NO NO. Recently we’ve all been guilty of cheap and dirty!”

Lilamani Dias, CEO of LOwe, Sri Lanka, asked whether advertising standards have inproved over the past five years, on the occasion of the annual creative awards, The Chillies

“Social colonization is when every web experience will be social.”

Jeremiah Owyang, on the news about Facebook opening its walled garden to third-party developers.

Bottom line, Carnival should have been ready sooner with a statement and made it easily accessible on its web site. Surely it has a crisis communications plan?

Len Gutman, Editor of ValleyPRBlog, on the the potential cancellation of a crusie to the Mexican Riviera