Tag Archives: news

Starting Out with the iPad: Reading

25 Aug

It hasn’t transformed my life. But some things are changing.

I got my iPad last week, a few days before the start of classes. I immediately procrastinated on finishing my syllabi by spending the better part of an evening setting it up with apps and files.

I’ll focus in this post on how the iPad has changed my experience as a reader so far, and follow up next week with a post about using the iPad in teaching after I’ve had a few more classes to test it out.

Screenshot of my Pulse setup; these are the first 3 of 20 feeds I've chosen.

News. I set up the slick Pulse app with feeds of local news from my local newspaper, the state news from the Sacramento Bee, investigative stories from California Watch, and a variety of other tech, higher ed, and knitting topics. (Yes, there is such a thing as knitting news.) These feeds, in combination with a perusal of the New York Times, BBC and AP apps, pretty much satisfied my morning news needs.

I experimented the first morning after setting this up by reading the newspaper after completing this iPad news routine, and found in it little I’d missed – the obituaries, letters to the editor, local lifestyle news. And, I can tweet an article from my local paper directly from Pulse without having to go to my browser, find the story (if I can), copy and paste the URL to Twitter, etc.

I am still debating whether I want to continue my newspaper subscription, but probably will out of loyalty to local journalism. That loyalty is still victorious over my desire to be more green. We’ll see how long it wins out.

Magazines. This one is an easier call. My magazine subscriptions are all going digital ASAP. As they expire, I’ll shift them over to the digital versions. I think almost all of my subscriptions are accessible digitally, and since most of them are digital replicas anyway, I don’t feel I’ll miss much besides the weight in my recycle bin. Even those I used to keep around – such as the occasional copy of Yoga Journal for a particular sequence, handy to have in print by the yoga mat – can be more easily stored and located on the iPad, which sits on the floor just as well.

Books. I bought one book on the iPad through the Kindle app. I am a heavy user of my local library, which efficiently brings requested books to my nearest branch. The free use of library books is much more appealing to me than the purchase of digital books from Amazon or Apple (especially for guilty-pleasure fiction I will never re-read). The one book I bought has a library waiting list of 600 people at the moment, so I was willing to spend $8 for the Kindle edition to avoid months of delay.

Using the iPad. I find it comfortable to read on the iPad, despite its weight and backlighting. I like that even with my severe myopia, I can make the text big enough to read without glasses – something I haven’t experienced comfortably since about sixth grade. The only challenge is reading on my dining table, where I have to turn the overhead lights off due to glare on the iPad’s shiny screen. Otherwise, I love having so much reading material on one device.

How has the iPad changed your reading experience? Am I the only one ready to end the print subscriptions, despite a lifelong love of print magazines? Please tell me I’m not the only traitor to the medium out there.

Do Social Media Users Link to Magazines?

31 May

But do they link to magazines' web sites? Photo by Annie Mole on Flickr.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has posted a summary of its recent study “New Media, Old Media: How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press.”

The study compares the variety of topics included in news-related blog posts and tweets with the range included in mainstream media coverage, and found that:

Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied.

I don’t find these results particularly surprising, but – as a magazine person – I wanted to know how often social media users linked to magazine stories online. I checked out the tables summarizing the PEJ data [PDF] and found that they had added newspapers and magazines together in their breakdown of the sources of links provided by bloggers and Twitter users. Unfortunately, this means that the study – unless the raw data can be broken apart once they’re made available – doesn’t tell us much about whether social media users are linking to magazines’ sites in their conversations about news.

The researchers note that:

In producing PEJ’s New Media Index, the basis for this study, there are some challenges posed by the breath [sic] of potential outlets. There are literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day. To make that prospect manageable, the study observes the “news” interests of those people utilizing social media, as classified by the tracking websites. PEJ did not make a determination as to what constitutes a news story as opposed to some other topic, but generally, areas outside the traditional notion of news such as gardening, sports or other hobbies are not in the purview of content.

So though newsmagazines’ web sites might be included in the analysis, we probably won’t see many other magazines in the dataset. That’s an understandable limitation of the study, given its specific interest. Magazines are also likely to be less represented because they don’t usually relate to breaking news, as Twitter users would most often be interested in sharing. But if magazines aren’t offering even slower-paced bloggers something to write about, perhaps publishers should be concerned.

I would guess that magazines’ web sites are also rarely linked to by social media users due to their typically poor layout and usability. But I’d like to see some data on social media users’ links to magazines – and think it would be helpful to the magazine industry to see how far they’re being left behind as web users share information and favorite stories using social media. (Or not. But I’m pessimistic.)

Will Young People Pay for News?

20 Jan

My students won’t pay for the New York Times.

When it implements its metered system in 2011, the New York Times is probably going to lose some of its most needed readers – young people who are slowly building an appetite for news.

I hope I’m wrong, and if I am, maybe some of my students or other young people will comment here and set me straight. But I think that today’s youth are so accustomed to free content, news and otherwise, that it will be difficult to change their ways and begin asking them to pay for news.

Photo by Flickr user striatic.

My students are not interested in paying for news, or for the entertainment they value: music or movies or TV shows. They’re used to getting all of these for free, either legally from sites like Hulu or through less ethical channels. I’ve asked them semester after semester about these issues, and they just aren’t willing to pay for any of it. They have always read news for free online, and asking them to pay is going to be a difficult demand.

It seems to me that a good starting point for getting young people to pay for news is to work with formats they have always paid for. For example, my students with iPhones are used to paying for apps. They don’t pay much for them, of course, but they do shell out a few dollars here and there. This is a media format that has always cost them money – not a new imposition of charges that will be seen as exactly that, an imposition and an “unfair” change in news organizations’ policies.

Working on young audiences first through these more familiar paid formats might be one strategy to open their minds to the need to pay for news. For example, The Guardian‘s iPhone app is $3.99, and may at some point involve further subscription fees. The McSweeney’s app is $5.99 and requires later renewals to keep new content coming. And yet the New York Times app is free. This seems like a missed opportunity to begin getting young people to pay for news access.

Photo by Flickr user LoveSystems.

I’m not personally opposed to the NYT‘s metering policy; I read the site extensively every day and will certainly end up paying for their content. I believe that if we want good journalism in the future, we have to put our money where it counts. I don’t think news organizations are obligated to provide their product for free, and I’d rather pay a reasonable amount for news than have it become solely reliant on advertising revenue and thereby even more subject to advertisers’ whims.

However, I’ve been socialized into believing that because I grew up in a family where newspapers showed up on the breakfast table daily, because I was required to engage with news throughout my education, and (especially) because I went on to graduate school in journalism and now teach it. I know that not everyone shares these values.

Therefore, I’d argue that beginning to ask younger generations to pay for online news – or at least the current generation of young people that is going to be most startled by this transition – needs to be accompanied by education about the value of journalism to our society. These young people, I fear, will be doubly skeptical of journalism: first because of the general public doubts about the value of the news media, and second because of what they may perceive as a “demand” for their money in return for online news.

Overcoming these doubts will require a great effort of education and positive public outreach on the part of the news organizations that hope to sell news to all their potential customers, young and old.

Crowdfunding News and the “News Mutual Fund”

4 Dec

I’ve been looking lately at some of the “crowdfunding” models for journalism, in which audience members donate money to specific stories whose production they want to support. Here’s my idea for a “news mutual fund” – a concept slightly different from the crowdfunding models I’ve seen so far.

One well-known crowdfunding project for journalism is Spot.Us. This organization provides a platform for public donations to proposed stories in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Potential donors can read a pitch for the story, follow the reporter’s blog and see other content related to the proposed story.

The Spot.Us site.

I’m afraid, though, that it’s a bit optimistic to expect the audience to evaluate, donate to, and follow up on stories at the international, national, state and local levels, as would really be needed to make this model widespread and effective throughout journalism. Not only is it a financial commitment, but it’s also a time commitment that goes beyond what most people will consider for news. I doubt most people will make this investment in news, especially given current levels of public appreciation for journalism.

It seems to me that if this model is to succeed, it needs to look at another model of investments that has been very successful: the mutual fund. As I see it, today’s crowdfunding possibilities – limited as they are – are like individual stock investments, with a “socially responsible investing” angle. A donor chooses to donate to X story because he or she feels that it has long-term value for a personal information “portfolio” and for a community.

But just like investing in individual stocks, picking those stories is a lot of work. People like mutual funds for their financial investments because they eliminate that detailed effort. In a mutual fund, a trusted manager with a proven track record is given funds to allocate based on a chosen model of investment. Many different mutual funds exist: some that are more risky, some that are less so, some that invest in particular industries and some that express particular ideological perspectives.

Maybe this is how crowdfunding could be approached – as a news mutual fund, rather than as a stock-picking process. Spot.Us does provide an option to simply donate money and allow the organization to choose where the funds are assigned. But little transparency is provided – as far as I can tell – as to how that selection is made.

In a news mutual fund, a manager would determine where news investors’ money was directed according to defined story selection parameters.

Sound like an editor? Does a news mutual fund sound a bit like buying a newspaper subscription and hoping your money goes to the “right” stories? Sure.

But most of the audience doesn’t know how editors select stories, and they have never had any input into that process. A more open “news mutual fund” process would lead to greater credibility and audience engagement, while eliminating the detail work on the audience’s behalf of doing the story selection work themselves. It would also maintain a degree of audience accountability for the manager, because if stories began to deviate from the investors’ chosen parameters, they could redirect their money to a different news fund.

I’m sure there are weaknesses to this model as well, just as there are in mutual fund investing, so the option to invest in individual stories – some of which could be collaborations among news producers – should still be available.

In a post on MediaShift, Spot.Us founder David Cohn noted that the site was able to fully fund a project that did not yet have a reporter assigned to it, meaning that the site’s managers developed the idea and then, once it was funded, could hire a freelancer to work on it. He says that the logistics of this process are much easier for the site, and also open up the chance to market the story to traditional news organizations that could reimburse Spot.Us its funding in exchange for first publication rights to the story. So here’s a case where Spot.Us could operate like the news mutual fund manager that I’m envisioning here. They control the funds and their allocation, and have already told the audience how this money will be spent. The development of the story, its assignment and its distribution would ideally be equally transparent through updates provided on the site.

The crowdfunding model for journalism is still in its early days, and there will no doubt be lots of experimentation. Testing the public’s willingness to invest in news is a daunting (and somewhat frightening) task, but with a variety of approaches, it might turn out to be an exciting and engaging process for journalists and the audience both.

Technology is not the answer (everywhere)

2 Oct

The Online News Association conference is happening this weekend in San Francisco. As I sit at home in Fresno – just a three-hour drive away – I’m thinking about the role of media here and there, and the different approaches to online news and communication that are possible in the two cities.

While the innovations being discussed at ONA are amazing and important to the future of the journalism profession, I am concerned that communities like mine will struggle to benefit from them in the near future.

Welcome to the information...road. By Flickr user Christian Terboven.

Welcome to the information...road. Photo by Flickr user Christian Terboven.

Some recent examples of innovative tech projects aimed at increasing the public’s engagement with news have included The Rapidian, a citizen journalism site in Grand Rapids, Mich., which received Knight Foundation funding and sleekly serves up hyperlocal news. I also downloaded the Fwix citizen journalism iPhone app, which is pretty cool, and have been on the lookout for other developments in citizen journalism and community information access.

However, it seems like the underlying assumption in many of these projects so far has been that if you build it, the participants will come. As long as the project uses the most up-to-date technology, provides near-immediate coverage of events and integrates numerous interactive opportunities, then it is assumed that it will gain community involvement and support (even as everyone acknowledges the financial details remain TBD).

What’s even better? If the project incorporates Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth and an iPhone app, of course.

But what if you build all that, and no one comes? It all sounds great, but without community access to (and enthusiasm for, and knowledge about) the use of this technology, these projects won’t go very far – and could even inadvertently damage communities by reinforcing class differences in political participation, giving people who already have a strong voice an even bigger microphone.

I’m thinking of the challenges faced in my city: Fresno, Calif. My campus was visited Wednesday by columnist Mike Osegueda of the Fresno Bee, who discussed the paper’s efforts to use social media, including citizen journalism, blogs and so forth. It’s been difficult to build those efforts, he said, partly because of the relatively small proportion of people in this region who regularly use computers and the Internet. Participation is low. It appears that the hard copy of the newspaper (though shrinking) – along with broadcast media – is still a primary way that people here engage with community issues.

Curious about his statements, I looked for some statistical data on Internet use in California’s Central Valley. As a new resident of this area, I didn’t know that there’s actually about a decade of research that documents a significant digital divide between this region of California and the rest of the state.

A June 2009 report (PDF) by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, shows that – remarkably – both Internet use and home broadband access actually declined from 2008 to 2009 in the Central Valley.

The Valley is the only region of California that showed decreases in these areas in the last year. It is also the lowest-ranked region of the state in both categories. The Bay Area leads the state in broadband access, found in 73 percent of those survey respondents’ homes; only 51 percent of those surveyed in the Valley have broadband at home, lagging well behind the national adoption rate of 63 percent. In the Bay Area, 86 percent of survey respondents “ever” use the Internet; only 67 percent in the Valley ever do. Ever. For anything, at any interval.

I’m not trying to disparage the Valley by pointing out these data. In reality, these findings are pretty much consistent with the urban/rural digital divide observed nationwide; much of the Valley is rural. Broadband access is notoriously difficult to come by in rural areas, especially at an affordable price. The decline in Internet use and home broadband access, moreover, could be attributed to the housing crisis and general economic decline, both of which have hit the Valley hard.

I think these data demonstrate, though, that the latest and greatest digital communication technologies simply aren’t going to be the best option for the struggles of every community. It’s easy for those of us in this field – inundated by tweets, aspiring to Google Wave invitations – to start to think: “If only we could get everyone a laptop, wifi and an iPhone, this town would be a better place! They’d tweet news about their neighborhoods! They’d send graffiti reports to City Hall!” I feel sometimes that I run the risk of isolating myself in a happy little bubble of early adopters who just aren’t representative of the public at large.

For many communities, communication solutions other than those at the pinnacle of innovation still need to be identified and implemented. The lack of funding for technological innovations is often a problem, but the lack of a well-equipped audience to participate in them is an even tougher issue. Existing or reconfigured newspapers and broadcast media can’t be left out of the mix entirely, though many of the leaders in communication innovations seem to have already left them for dead and moved on to more technologically sophisticated options. Consider: actual paper may still need to be involved in solutions for these communities – at least in the near future.

When we do build high-tech communication tools in communities, the means of accessing them have to be there – which include low-cost broadband access and mobile technology, education of the public in their use (inside and outside schools), and governance that is open and responsive to citizen participation.* Otherwise, these technologies are likely simply to perpetuate the class distinctions that already characterize public participation in local politics. A recent Pew report describes the demographics of online and offline political activities among Americans; you can probably guess who participates most in local politics.

I love the newest iPhone apps as much as the next tech-savvy soul, and we certainly shouldn’t stop thinking about tools for a future where everyone can carry a smartphone and be skilled in digital technology. But for many communities today, it’s going to take something other than, or in addition to, great tech to enable communication that can resolve local issues.

* Coincidentally, the Knight Foundation released a report today (link to PDF brochure of conclusions/recommendations) that reinforces some of the statements I’m making here. Its emphasis on the need to make digital and media literacy training available to both youth and adults, along with widespread broadband access, is intended to prevent the formation of a “second class” of citizens without this information and the capacity for engagement. I haven’t read the full report yet, but am anxious to see if it offers practical solutions for different types of communities with diverse technology and communication capabilities.

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