Arianna Huffington huffs New Media to Congress' Face

"But what won't work — what can't work — is to act like the last 15 years never happened, that we are still operating in the old content economy as opposed to the new link economy, and that the survival of the industry will be found by 'protecting' content behind walled gardens," she told the subcommittee. "No, the future is to be found elsewhere. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. It is citizen journalism and foundation-supported investigative funds . . . . And if you can't find your way to that, then you can't find your way."

SHOOT: There has been a fundamental shift in everything - banking, energy, politics and media. But we've been trying to resist these changes. In the New Deal there will have to be 1 of each thing. Choices will have to be made. You won't have a landline and cellphone, a stove and a microwave, a big car and a small car. We'll have to choose one and stick to it.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Coll and Moroney questioned whether Internet sites could cover expensive news-gathering events such as wars and disasters over the long haul. Typically today, they do little original reporting and instead "link" to content produced by traditional news organizations, which they do not pay for using their content. "Even the most optimistic practitioners of the new journalistic models tend to accept that a world in which Web-based publishers or aggregators could afford, for example, to simultaneously fund and operate professional journalism bureaus in Baghdad , Kabul , Islamabad , Europe and Asia is simply not foreseeable at present," Coll said. Arianna Huffington , the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post , a liberal Web site, told the subcommittee that the newspaper industry has to shed the old paradigm and embrace the new Web world.

Blogging For Money

You can earn around R30 every time you Blog. It’s not a lot, but add it up and it can pay your cellphone bill, and if you’re disciplined, your gym membership fees too.

And another reason to consider citizen mediated websites is you are finding a wider audience for your pearls of wisdom, or pictures worth so many words. And you never who might pick up on these contributions, and where it might take you from there.

On the 20th of February 2006, having become an almost daily blogger for about a year, I submitted my first story (a motoring review) to Reporter.co.za – a citizen journalism website based entirely on user generated content. Since then I have submitted over 300 stories and hundreds of images. Do the math: that’s around R10 000 extra pocket money for stuff that was going on my blog anyway.

The Plot Thickens

Although none of my Nobel-worthy contributions* were snapped up by TIME or NEWSWEEK, I was asked to attend (all expenses paid) a blogging conference (representing Reporter.co.za), and there have been a number of soapie dramas that have spun out of the citizen media stuff. The most controversial articles included my attacks on Southern Free State Cycling (Free State Cycling a Shambles), and then the follow-up lambasting that went on at the cycling forum The Hub (breach of contract (to the value of about R8000).

The point is, even if you don’t want to rant, you can get money and attention for the sort of socially important, socially acceptable and particularly altruistic stuff you want people to take cognizance of.


International Coverage

There are not many citizen media sites that pay, but there are others. Ohmynews International pays more than Reporter, but they’re also stricter about quality and have far more people writing for them. It also helps to have a Korean bank account (as international cash transfers can eat into what you earn). I’ve submitted over 230 and earned – hold your breath – over W1.3 million. Relax, that’s about R10 000 over an extended length of time. But at W20 000 (R149) per story, you get rewarded for quality, and incidentally, being more ‘international’, they HAVE had contributors who’ve been picked up by TIME.

Video

Another site that you may not have heard of is Metacafe. It’s basically a You Tube-that-pays. It probably gets less stuff submitted, but it is certainly a site worth visiting. They pay you based on pay-per-view ($5 for every 1000 Views). If you think you can’t make money, ask the guys who walk away with $30 000 (some videos get over a million hits).

Local Blogs That Pay

Although I have not done this myself, I've heard that you can also earn money at MY DIGITAL LIfe - a South African site. MDL allows you to earn money based on hits to your content. Register, submit 10 stories (to gain 'author' status), and you get 10 cents for every hit.

Quality Control

The great thing about sending your content to these citizen media sites is that it controls the quality of what you’re doing in the reverse direction too. When you’re writing with an audience (and a possible income) in mind, I think there is a tad (and a vital tad) more discipline and afterthought involved. This is good news for the Blogosphere, which needs consciousness, and a few streaks of light – the lights of revelation, insight and activism (and not just vitriol, porn, rants and raving) to flow through it. In this sense the internet and blogs can begin to fulfill the promise and potential we once believed it had.

*My most popular story on Ohmynews received 14 498 hits, and was titled Why Insects Can't Fly Straight At Night.

To get involved in this process, in this intelligent conversation, register at reporter by clicking here.
Register at Ohmynews here.
Register at Metacafe by clicking here.

Are you an Amablogger-blogger?

The above ranking lasted about 2 minutes... ;-)
Get sorted at Amatomu.com

David Bullard won’t be reading this article. He recently quit blogging. For the rest, if you’re one of the 25 037 bloggers out there (11% active apparently), then you need to get yourself sorted at Amatomu.

Amatomu is basically a local-is-lekker version of Technorati, but I’m inclined to say it’s a lot better than Technorati: it’s zippy, it’s dynamic. It should be; it’s run by the geniuses at Mail & Guardian.

The site is very practical, useful and interesting. What’s nifty is you get to see a ranking of the local blogs according to a number of criteria. You can also see where the local Zeitgeist (what everything is thinking about) is going. Google has recently launched a South African version of their Zeitgeist, but it’s nice to have a one-stop-shop for all things Blogging.

Amatomu also provides overall stats for the South African blogosphere: you’d better believe it is expanding at a PHENOMENAL rate. To give you an idea, August’s tally of unique blog visitors is 621 204. This puts blogs in the top 5 of South Africa's most popular websites.

These statistics and others have urgent implications for mainstream media. But some websites are responding to the changing playing fields. Johncom’s The Times.co.za is decribed on Amatomu as: “… the first mainstream newspaper to embrace blogs and the social media and social networking environment in general in its print pages.”

Amatomu have also ranked The Times.co.za as their ‘Player of the Week’.
Arthur Goldstuck writing for M&G’s Thought Leader defends the nomination as follows:
“The Times… serves almost as a manual for social media. It gives bloggers a print platform to flex their blogging muscles as “blogumists” and expand their audiences dramatically.”

I agree. The Times.co.za is the only South African News website I know of that allows you to embed video onto your blog. Are there any others right now? Plenty of overseas sites (like Metacafe and YouTube) have provided this option for some time.

What Blogs Are About

Bloggers want to have a conversation within their communities, and sometimes, outwards, as they attempt to engage with a wider audience. So being able to post news onto facebook, or your own blog helps get these conversations going. I’ve been experimenting lately with my own blog, but I’m not always sure I want too many strangers reading my content. The more people who visit my blog, I’ve started to realize, the more cagey I have to be about personal revelations.

Be Careful What You Blog

What you blog I suppose depends on what you’re prepared to etch in stone. It’s true that once you post to the web, it’s very difficult to erase. Just ask Amy Polumbo how she felt after being crowned Miss New Jersey, and then having some skimpy Facebook pictures emerge in a tasteless (and unsuccessful) blackmailing scandal. I’ve also ranted on my own blog and reaped the whirlwind. Bloggers and those who read them forget that once the emotion has passed, the words remain, so beware that you’re venturing where angels fear to tread.

Forever and Ever, (Web)men

The phrase ‘carved in stone’ will soon be a less articulate expression, than ‘carved in cyberstone’. The good news is you can pay some companies (like Namyz, Defend My Name and International Reputation Management) to erase questionable content. This usually involves negotiation with webmasters. But in reality, once information is on the internet, it can be downloaded onto computers, and even if erased off the net, copies are likely to remain and even resurface.

Now, How It Works

So here’s how Amatomu works. In order to track your blog, whose visiting and how popular it is, you need to embed an HTML tag onto your site. Don’t worry, it’s invisible. You might want to add a ‘Schmaak This’ button so that people can rate your posts and you can check how popular you are in the blogosphere. Another useful tool to either consult or attach to your site is Amatomu’s Zeitgeist.

Posting articles relating to the Amatomu Zeitgeist means you’re tapping into the stream of consciousness of the crowd. Being relevant is more important than ever if you mean to be an interesting blogger. Amatomu enables your blog to be all that it can be.

*Vincent Maher, the M&G Online's strategist

Current TV

From Current TV:

Current is a global television network that gives you the opportunity to create and influence what airs on TV.

Current is about what's going on: stories from the real world, told by you.

We slice our schedule into short segments that we call "pods" — each just a few minutes long. You'll see profiles of interesting people on the rise, intelligence on trends as they spring up around us, and international news from new perspectives.

And much of it comes straight from you.

We call it viewer-created content, or VC2. Right now, VC2 makes up about a third of our channel — and that share is growing.

It works like this:

Anyone who wants to contribute can upload a video. Then, everyone in the Current online community helps decide what should be on TV. You can join in at either stage — watch & vote or make video. (We've also got online training to help you get the skills you need to make TV!)

This is definitely not a traditional TV network. Watching Current, you'll see more, on more topics, from more points of view.

But if we're going to succeed, we need you to do more than watch; we need you to jump in and participate.

Here are all the ways to get started:
Watch a sample of our TV programming
Check out our full schedule for a look at what's on TV
Dive into the Watch & Vote section
Meet others on our message boards
Read our FAQ for answers to more questions

Brilliant! Fold Your T-Shirts in Seconds

How To Make Folding Machine Tshirt - Click here for more blooper videos

New Citizen Media Website Starting in UK

http://www.scribblesheet.co.uk/

Citizen Media

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

James Carey, the esteemed Columbia University journalism professor who died in 2006, once wrote that journalism was essentially conversation among citizens. Communication was culture, he often said. It was creating a community “of conversationalists, of people who talk to one another, who resolve disputes with one another through talk,” he wrote in an essay titled “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”

In 2006, citizen journalism continued to grow as part of online journalism. The terms have changed, from “zines,” to personal Web sites, to blogs, but they all share a common character — enthusiasm for people themselves creating, sharing and participating in the news of the day.

Citizen journalism, in other words, is a rediscovery of the essential truth Carey articulated years before the Internet was invented.

Throughout the year the pattern of citizens becoming pro-active participants in their own journalism continued to gain momentum, becoming part of the political campaign, gaining economic muscle and even becoming something that the mainstream media embraced rather than something they saw as a threat. A larger number of newspapers, indeed, began to allow users to weigh in on particular stories and to upload their own photographs. A few even incorporated citizen blogs alongside those of staff reporters.

And perhaps since overhead and production costs are relatively low for corporate media companies, citizen-generated content is increasingly becoming part of these sites’ DNA.

Citizen journalism, in short, is becoming less something that is dismissed as the amateur hour before the professionals take the stage and more something that enriches the conversation.
In the midst of these developments, the earlier form of citizen voice — blogs — began to grow in ways that raised question about whether it was becoming less a part of the grass roots and more a part of the establishment. A group of celebrity bloggers, for example, have emerged, and some have even become familiar faces on TV.

Web 2.0

For many industry analysts, 2006 was the year Web 2.0 made an impact on online media.
Web 2.0 is a broad term, first coined by Dale Dougherty and popularized by O’Reilly Media, a publisher of books and magazines mainly geared toward the technology community. It refers to any media that involve the interaction and participation of the consumer: uploading and disseminating text, audio, video and digital photographs over the Web. Well-known examples of Web 2.0 include Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, and MySpace.

The number of Americans participating in Web 2.0 activities suggests it could soon become a major component of the online experience, according to survey research conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

According to a study released in February by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab, such hyperlocal “citizen media” sites that rely on user-generated content are quickly proliferating. J-Lab has been able to identify 700 to 800 of them, the majority of which have been launched in the past two years.

The sites employ a wide variety of business and editorial models, but they appear to share a common enthusiasm for creating community conversations. Among the respondents to the J-Lab survey, 73% said they considered their sites a “success” and 82% planned to stick with their ventures indefinitely. Four out of five said their sites provided local information not found anywhere else, and three-quarters indicated that they helped build connections to the community. Slightly more than a quarter of those surveyed thought these operations increased voter turnout.5

There are questions, however, about the economics of citizen media. The J-Lab report acknowledged that many of the outlets were “shoestring” operations hampered by a lack of human and financial resources. And even as it predicted that the medium was here to stay, the study also anticipated significant turnover and burnout among the operators.

When asked how much it cost to launch their “citizen media” sites, 43% of the survey respondents put the figure at less than $1,000. In addition, 51% said they didn’t need to earn revenue to continue operating. Asked if their revenues exceeded operating costs, 42% said no and another 38% did not know.6

Some of these operations are diversifying their revenue base and developing distinctive brands — such as the Rocky Mountain-based New West, which has created related businesses in advertising and publishing. But as the report suggests, many of the sites at this point are essentially mom-and-pop operations.

Perhaps the key question is whether an economic model built almost exclusively around ad revenue will prove sustainable in the long run. According to some analysts who study citizen media sites, the sites urgently need to create multiple revenue streams, not just from advertising, especially in times when revenue and profits are down.

But increasingly, analysts believe consumers will come to demand the ability to interact with the news producers, or they will migrate elsewhere. Indeed, some industry analysts argue that online newspapers and other news sites need to offer more interactivity in order to survive. “What makes the Internet so attractive is consumers can communicate with consumers. And they can communicate with [the publication] in a way they feel comfortable with,” said Gerard Broussard, senior partner and director of media analytics at GroupM Interaction, at the Media magazine Forecast 2007 conference.

Blogs

For all the growth in interactivity, perhaps the purest form remains blogging, or personal Weblogs, the phenomenon in which someone creates a site and becomes an instant own publisher and writer. After seeming to stall or even lose some momentum in 2005, there was evidence that blogs regained momentum again in 2006. Whether a political season had something to do with that, or whether the gain was more widespread, is uncertain.

Blog Readership

The most recent data suggest a significant increase in the number of people who read blogs. Survey results from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that the percentage of online users who say they have ever read blogs rose in February 2006 to 39%, up markedly from 27% a year earlier. That puts the total number of Americans who now read blogs at approximately 57 million.7

But to put that in perspective, a February 2006 Gallup survey found that reading blogs (20%) is far less popular than e-mail (87%), checking news and weather (72%), and shopping and travel (both at 52%), and is still behind some online activities that are generally considered to be fringe use: instant messaging (28%), auctions (23%), and videocasts and downloading music (22%).8
Of course, the rise of blogs has its roots in politics, when bloggers gave the 2004 Presidential contender Howard Dean early, albeit short-lived, momentum. Two years later, it appeared a higher number of Democrats read blogs than Republicans. According to data from Gallup, 15% of the population who said they are frequent blog readers identified themselves as Democrats, compared to just 6% who said they were Republican and 7% who considered themselves independent.9

What types of blogs are people reading? While the blogs that generate the most buzz are ones devoted to politics, many popular blogs focus on other topics. Research from Edelman, a public relations firm, found that of the top 100 blogs in the U.S., 34% cover technology, 26% are about culture, and 25% are devoted to politics. The study also found that just 3% were what it called “personal diaries.”10

Blog Creators

Blogs include everything from a personal diary about bird watching to an outlet that breaks news about current events to a promotional public relations tool on a car manufacturing site to a celebrity-filled gossip page. Some are the voice of just one person. Others serve more as forums open to any registered user to post opinions.

The number of bloggers, those who produce content as opposed to merely reading it, did not appear to grow in 2006. The most recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggest that just 8% of online users say they author their own blogs.11

In previous years of the annual report, we reported that bloggers tend to be younger, wealthier, and more tech-savvy than the general online population. The most recent data suggest this is still largely true. For instance, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that more than half of all bloggers are under 30. Moreover, bloggers are avid news consumers: 95% report reading news online, compared to 73% of the general online population, Pew Internet found.

We’ve also begun to understand more about the attitudes bloggers hold toward their work. Most bloggers, again according to Pew Internet, do not think of themselves as journalists. Over a third (37%) say their most popular topic is their life and experience (37%), more than twice number (11%) who named politics and news.12

It was long the consensus that since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the blogosphere was dominated by conservative voices. But a close examination of the 12 most popular political blogs, according to a June 2006 listing from Technorati, revealed that at least at the top, blog voices lean to the left. Seven can be considered liberal, four conservative, and one without a clear partisan nature.

Blogging Economics

Except for a very small group, most bloggers make no money from their endeavors.
Just 8% of bloggers report generating any income from their Web sites, according to survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Among those bloggers who report making money, most say they do so by selling items on their sites (68%) or through advertising (56%). Smaller numbers receive donations from readers (29%) or secure subscriptions to premium content (19%). For now, anyway, that seems acceptable. Making money was the least-offered reason for blogging.13

Those bloggers who do earn some money have been hesitant to say publicly how much revenue the ads on their sites have generated. But the blogger ad market appears fairly small; one estimate puts it at $50 million to $100 million. But according to a research study conducted by Outsell Inc., which surveyed 1,200 advertisers in November 2005, blog advertising was expected to grow 43% in 2006.14

A few years ago, many media critics offered varying degrees of skepticism toward the fanfare that surrounded the emergence of blogs. And a minority even questioned how long they would be around.

Heading into 2007, some of that skepticism — shared by much of the public as well —remains. How much can one trust the accuracy of news and information posted on blogs? How can blogs survive without a reliable revenue stream?

It may be a case of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Much of the talk a few years ago — that blogs would supplant traditional media — seems antiquated now. The relationship between blogs and traditional media, in the end, may be more complementary, even synergistic, as time moves on. Citizen journalism, and the interactivity it promises in Web 2.0, increasingly seems to offer the potential of enriching traditional journalism (by enriching citizens), not threatening it.

Editors 'out of touch' with citizens

Citizens offer new take on news
From the BBC online:

Sites such as Digg are setting a new agenda A news agenda formulated by citizens would be radically different from that put together by journalists.
That is the conclusion of a US study which compared what made the headlines in the mainstream media with that of three diverse user-driven news sources.
The study - conducted by a wing of the US Pew Research centre - compared stories over seven days.

Its results will make interesting reading for news editors as well as the new breed of citizen journalists.

The report - released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism - took a snapshot of news stories from the last week in June 2007.

Raw information

It compared the stories making the headline in 48 mainstream news sources, including TV, radio and online, to that of three user-driven news sites - Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us.
It found that the interests of users was markedly different to that of traditional editors.
Seven out of ten of the stories selected by the user-driven sites came from blogs or non-news websites with only 5% of stories overlapping with the ten most widely-covered stories in the mainstream media.

"Users gravitated towards more eclectic stories. There was a sense that users sifting through a lot of raw information; rumour, gossip, propaganda and the news were all thrown into the mix," said Tom Rosenstiel, one of the authors of the report.

In a week dominated by stories about Iraq and the debate about immigration, users were more interested in the release of the iPhone and the news that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth.

This technology bias was partly down to the fact that it was early adopters of technology that lead the way when it came to "playing with the potential of the internet to empower users", said Mr Rosenstiel.

Citizen editors

Traditional news gathering is not redundant quite yet. In all, 40% of the most popular stories on Digg and Del.icio.us, were devoted to technology with the second most popular category being lifestyle stories.

One of the biggest differences noted by the researchers was the emphasis put on a single story. While the mainstream media tended to revisit the same story from a different angle each day, users were happier dipping in to a variety of topics.

"It was more hit and miss with a sense that they wanted to know a little about a lot of things," said Mr Rosenstiel.

News editors need not hang up their notebooks and pens quite yet though. The report found that traditional news outlets such as the BBC still accounted for a quarter of the content on the user news sites. Interestingly, original content accounted for just 1%.

"That suggests that people are re-aggregating the news in the style of citizen editors rather than journalists," said Mr Rosenstiel.

"These sites offer people a different take on the news but it doesn't mean that traditional journalism has become irrelevant. They are forming more of secondary conversation about the news," he said.

World's first internet president logs on

Web already shaping policy of new South Korean leader

Jonathan Watts in Seoul
Monday February 24, 2003
The Guardian

South Korea will stake a claim to be the most advanced online democracy on the planet tomorrow with the inauguration of a president who styles himself as the first leader fully in tune with the internet.

From calls for a softer stance towards North Korea to demands for a revision of the security alliance with the US, websites are already shaping the position of Roh Moo-hyun's new administration.

"The development of internet technology has changed the whole political dynamic in South Korea to an extent that the outside world has not yet grasped," said Yoon Yong-kwan, the head of foreign policy formulation in Mr Roh's transitional team. "It will affect foreign policy."

The rise of webocracy has already made South Korea a place of exhilarating but unpredictable change.

In recent months online campaigns have swung the presidential election, stirred tens of thousands into anti-US protests and nudged government policy on the nuclear standoff.

New Korea's hi-tech credentials have been a focus of national pride. Its biggest claim to international fame is the development of internet services, which are far ahead of most countries. Almost 70% of homes have a broadband connection, compared with about 5% in Britain.

Because of the high connection speeds, much faster than most British broadband, people use the web more for shopping, trading and chatting. Koreans are said to spend 1,340 minutes online per month, and 10% of economic activity is related to IT - one of the highest levels in the world.

"The internet is so important here," a western diplomat in Seoul said. "This is the most online country in the world. The younger generation get all their information from the web. Some don't even bother with TVs. They just download the programmes."

The voice of this New Korea is OhmyNews, arguably the world's most domestically powerful news site, which has built up almost as big a readership and as fearsome a reputation for moving public opinion as the Sun.

"OhmyNews is as influential as any newspaper," a South Korean diplomat in Tokyo said. "No policymaker can afford to ignore it. South Korea is changing in ways that we cannot believe ourselves."

Polls showed that the victory in December of Mr Roh - who claims to be the world's first president to understand HTML website coding - came from a huge surge of support from twenty- and thirty-somethings. In South Korea, where elections are usually decided by regional rather than generational loyalties, this was a dramatic development.

It was not the last. An OhmyNews report on an accident in which two girls were crushed to death by a US army tractor prompted one surfer to call for demonstrations. Within a week, South Korea was witnessing the biggest anti-US protests in its history.

"We are becoming very powerful," said Bae Eul-sun, one of the Ohmynews editorial team. "The pay is lousy, but it is very satisfying to work here because I really feel like I can change the world little by little."

When the new administration takes power, its external priorities will mark a continuation of the "sunshine policy" of outgoing president Kim Dae-jung, who focused on maintaining a strong alliance with the United States while engaging with North Korea.

But Mr Yoon said policy towards North Korea would be developed to reflect public opinion better. This is likely to give more influence to domestic media and less to the US.

"We will maintain strong ties with the US, but our young people have tasted democracy and they speak out about what they feel. They believe bilateral relations are important but unlike the older generation they don't think it is taboo to make demands of the US."

The change is already apparent. In comparison with the efforts it made during the last North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993-94, Seoul has taken a far more active role in trying to head off a confrontation - even at the expense of infuriating its ally.