The first real blogs to surface at the turn of the century, or thereabouts, represented a huge leap in the media disruption, later manifesting itself in the demise of numerous newsprint outlets and the subsequent plunge in the old media’s revenues, further manifested by the coming of Facebook, Twitter and similar phenomena, rendering most news corporations’ quest for a sustainable business model, by way of pay walls and mobile apps, a rather desperate one.
Along came the automated aggregation tools, such as Paper.li, enabling the private news consumers to compile their very own newspapers, based on tweets, stories, links and video clips from a number of sources, of his or her very own choice. The beauty of it is that there’s really no rocket science involved. Truth be told, the concept isn’t entirely new either. As I started researching the phenomenon, I suddenly remembered my old account with The Twitter Tim.es, in principle based on Paper.li‘s idea, if in fact it’s not the other way around.
Journalism’s decline
As you may have surmised already, I am a bit of a media buff. Can’t be helped, after some 30 years in the trade. On the whole I am very pleased with the general development, rendering newsprint a thing of the past in the Petterson household. I do however not subscribe to the idea that the quantity of social media represent an improvement in the quality. In general terms we must admit that the quality of journalism, even in the old media, has seen a downturn, in spite of the technology’s added value, in terms of audio and video streaming, live reporting via Cover it Live, Twitter integration, great, animated infographics opportunities, and real-time commenting. Sadly the majority of our tech enthusiasts and social media advocates seem to take the opposite stance, making out the means an improvement in their own right, ignoring the impeding consequences for the written word – or the thoroughness with which journalism is practised.
Get your media kicks over @ media3oh Daily
In an attempt at exploring even that aspect of the growth of social media, and the consequential demise of journalistic quality, I set out to launch a blog the other day, prepared to invite some of the most influential and experienced media (and “new” media) experts as occasional contributors. I’m happy to announce that the project stranded, even before launch (as you will see), only to be replaced by the obvious Paper.li alternative; media3oh Daily, as seen to the right, with reference to Media 3.0, of course.
The daily digest regenerates every 24 hours, with stories, links and flicks provided by top notch media resources throughout the world, based on this Twitter list, growing by the day (please leave a comment if you have any suggestions).
The editor is dead, long live the editor
Now that we’re all our own editors, the institutional media find themselves in a more vulnerable position than ever before. Their feeble attempts at alienating even more of their up until recently loyal users by raising pay walls around their content, and launching freemium solutions, will only add to services such as Paper.li – and others, even more sophisticated, to come.
The Apple enthusiasts among you will of course appreciate the fairly recent Flipboard app for iPad, sporting a really appealing interface, even if it resembles the Paper.li service – in principle.
I have noticed how the social media optimists depict the technological development an improvement for journalism, which it could well be, but I fear it’s more of an excuse not to exercise proper journalism.
