Technology and Journalism

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For this blog post, I will focus on the influence of technology on journalism. I will pull my analysis and synthesis from the readings in DPI 659—further shedding light through my personal experiences.

I have witnessed first hand the extraordinary changes that have occurred in journalism due to technology. Coming from a family that reads A LOT and loves the news, drastic changes occurred over the past 10 years in our household. When I was a senior in high school, my parents ordered 4 newspapers: St. Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. At this point, no one in our family had laptops—with only one PC in our house. Fast-forward to now, everyone in my family has at least one laptop, a kindle, iphone. My parents have stubbornly held out on 2 print papers, but read most of their news on their laptops. My mom gets updates from the New York Times on her iphone. My dad often forwards his favorite article from Huffington Post. For me, I certainly don’t get any print news, and read everything online. As a news junkie, I stream through a few blogs and various news sites throughout the day. As a poor student, if I hit the number of 20 on the NYT, I often will Google the title of the article I want to read, and it will show up for free.

The question arises, if people, even my parents are cancelling their print newspapers, avid fans of the NYT are not even paying the subscription fee, and millions of other people are reading blogs over mainstream news sites—how are these news companies going to stay afloat? Is technology destroying the news?

The New Yorker article, “Out of Print,” highlights this drastic shift in newspapers. Stating that once the main newspapers were monopolies and now the reporting has shifted to online news and bloggers. Where newspapers used to get most of its money from print ads, craigslist’s has made them almost extinct. The most impressive stat that Out of Print cited was that publicly traded American newspapers have lost 42 percent of their market value in three years. Let me repeat that, 42 percent in THREE YEARS. That is incredible.

In Shirky’s “Thinking the Unthinkable”, he states many things that most of us thought were unthinkable for Newspapers and their readers, but that are occurring. Such as “Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires.” Again, how can these newspapers stay afloat?

And then there comes the competition of the blogs. For our readings, some articles strongly against blogs and others highlighting the importance of them. “Digital Maoism”, argues about the hazards of the online collectivism. One interesting example that Lanier uses is how over and over his wiki cites that he is a film director and that he has only done one film in his life and that doesn’t even fully represent him. But, over and over, that is what is written, even though it is not representative of him. He believes that the collectivism is almost like the bible, you get a lot of different perspectives but it is not exactly accurate.

However, Winer’s, “Reading from New Execs” argues the opposite. Specifically he highlights the shift in news reporting in which now, mainstream news reporters/witnesses are not even important anymore with individuals/witnesses across the country who can blog about what they see. These people, often locals of the area, can witness just as accurately as a reporter.

And in the article, “State of Blogosphere in 2010”, I was surprised by how profitable a blog can be. The average earnings made by blogs are a ten fold the investment put into the blog. Obviously, individuals will now have an incentive to go into blogging rather than mainstream news in which the pay is much less.

It is clear that journalism has shifted drastically and I actually agree with many parts of the articles that I cited in this entry. However, I don’t believe in the doomsday theory of mainstream journalism. I agree with our guest speaker Stephen Hall that the returns will be lower and many of the poor newspapers will go under (which they have) however, the best will stick around. The NYT payment micropayments do not seem to have deterred that many readers and it seems like anyone who is willing to pay, will actually pay—including myself when I am working again. I am curious though, I wonder if it would be better for the NYT to do a payment option of “pay what you think this is worth”. I would think many more affluent people who pay a higher rate, and the students would not pay until they could. This would be a more inclusive technique and has proven effective (i.e. various musicians) before. Either way, journalism is changing with technology and there must be continuous adaptations in order for mainstream journalist to stay afloat. While I will continue to enjoy my favorite bloggers, I will also continue to enjoy the WSJ and the NYT.

Wiki Analysis on Canvassing

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The article on Wikipedia can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvassing

I chose “canvassing” as my Wikipedia article to evaluate. I have a pretty good grasp on this subject: I worked for the Obama Campaign as a Field Organizer and also worked with the Fund For Public Interest research as a paid canvasser. For the criteria that we are evaluating, the page is a bit underrepresented for many of the criteria. In particle the comprehensiveness, sourcing and illustrations are its weakest categories.

The comprehensiveness is mediocre for this wiki page, lacking some major categories. It covers many different types of canvassing (i.e. from political to paid; phone to door-to-door). However, there is no mention of the history or origin of canvassing. Moreover, the article does not expand or explain the following types of canvassing: polling, religious, and specific examples of political campaigns. For polling, canvassing is a very popular, effective tactic for political campaigns. There should be mention of this type of canvass and how it works with respect to political campaigns. Furthermore, for many religious groups such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witness, the canvass is a tactic used for proselytizing. In fact, this is a critical, and often mandatory part of these religious groups. I would also like specific examples from various political campaigns. There are many candidates that used canvassing as a very effective tool for their political campaign. Specifically, George W Bush, had a huge, effective canvass on the ground level. Furthermore, Obama expanded this even more with his large, ground force that strongly emphasized community canvassing. Finally, the comprehensiveness is further limited by the lack of specific details and examples—I will analyze this further in the blog post.

The sourcing is very weak for this topic. There are only 2 sources, with both being books: one from the Labor Party and the other about winning elections. There are many books about paid canvassing, but none represented. Furthermore, there are no citations from the press, magazines, documentaries or scholarly journals. There is a lot of information about how canvassing can swing political races, and there is nothing sourced. In particle, I would like more data represented how the specific percentages that canvassing can effect certain issues or politic races. Moreover, the paid canvassing group, the FUND, recently had a high profile lawsuit that lasted years. This is not mentioned, nor represented in the citations.

The article is fairly neutral and does not show bias. There is a section on the “negative of canvassing” but it does not talk about the lawsuit (as previously mentioned) nor does it talk about the dangers that come with door-to-door canvassing. It does mention the burn-out rate, but again, I want specific statistics for this rate—none are provided.

The readability and formatting is fine for this page. I do not have suggestions at the moment for improvement. This is a strength within the article.

The illustrations are very minimal. There is only one picture and it is not clear that it is a canvass. I would recommend a picture that clearly shows a person at a door with a clipboard and potentially shaking hands with the homeowner. I think that would be more representative. Perhaps a picture of a famous political candidate. Moreover, I think showing an actual picture of a canvass script would be a helpful illustration for understanding.

Overall, the canvassing Wikipedia can be significantly improved by expanding on the comprehensiveness, sources and illustration.

Google, The Empire

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“We want Google to be the third half of your brain”, Brin, the cofounder of Google declares to Steven Levy. Wow, this is quite a bold statement. I wonder, what are the implications if this comes true? Or has it come true? In Levy’s, In the Plex, he explores the inside of the Google empire: the culture, founders, employees, future aspirations and subsequent decline.

Levy’s In the Plex really resonated with me. Levy begins the novel and continues throughout with Google’s focus to always innovate. In particular, Google is constantly thinking about what is that next idea and how do we mold it for the general public. I have found this with so many of the services that Google provides. For example, when Google developed Google Maps (now being sued)—it was a far superior service than MapQuest. Much easier for the user—I was instantly sold. This has happen with so many of its services from Google Scholar to Google Mail. Google is always innovating, and becoming VERY rich from this innovation— oh and not to mention, those lucrative ads.

The culture of the company is very interesting to me. I loved reading about the toys throughout the office and how everything in the office revolved around appeasing the talent (mostly engineers). Similar to the founders, I was also a Montessori child—so I can see how the culture of learning and “doing” is very prevalent, aligned to the end goal of innovation. Moreover, the 20 percent rule was also conducive to allowing the staff to continue to work on their passions and continue to innovate.

There were disturbing aspects of the book. The chapter on the lack of anonymity of the company was a bit disconcerting. I know we learned about it in class, how Google stores all of the data etc, but reading about it further reinforced how disturbing this is. Especially since it seemed wrong to one of the CEOs! Personal information searches can expose a lot of information about individuals—just look at the fortune they have made through customized Ads! This definitely makes me think twice about my searches.

My background in politics made me very interested when Levy wrote about Google and politics. For the most part, Google did not have an outward bias for Obama. But within the office, the employees were very pro-Obama. Moreover, Google played a major role in the election, with the availability of information and advertising for both candidates. Since, Obama had a better Internet campaign, Google most likely “helped” him more. Furthermore, the analysis about the Whitehouse compared to Google was interesting. An employee compared working in the Whitehouse a marathon while working in Google like an episode of survivor, you must “outwit, outplay and outlast”.

I agree with most of Levy’s analysis and am fascinated with the initial crumbling of the Google Empire. When I Google (not joking), “Google lawsuit”, I found hundreds of links about various lawsuits. I found Google Watch to be a fairly good blog on the various levels of trouble that Google has gotten in. Moreover, there has been a lot of press on the antitrust case.

Google is a big part of the world. Google is a big part of my life. With minimal reflection, I can confidently say that I am completely dependent on Google. Whether it is for research, analysis, info gathering, or just mindless searching/scrolling: I use Google all of the time! In general, I love it. I think I started to realize how big Google was in my life in college. The difference between research was night and day. I no longer had to go to the library but instead I could get almost everything online. Google even addressed the issue of scholarly articles by having Google Scholar. I believe that Google will stay with me for most of my career. It is hard for to think about not having Google in ANY career that I have. Perhaps if I chose to live in the wilderness, completely cut off from society, without a computer, THEN, I could see myself not using Google. But what If I have an iphone? Until then, I will continue to use Google at the same rate—perhaps a little more wary than before.

Summary/Analysis/Synthesis 1–DPI 659

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Shirky’s, Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing shows how technology has profoundly changed the way in which society lives and interacts with each other. Specifically, Shirky refers to any technology that effects communication, with the Internet having the most significant effect on communication. His main thesis is that the Internet allows individuals to connect with thousands of individuals and rapidly organize people in groups for whatever aligned purpose, goal, or outcome.

Shirky categorizes the type of communication used for web organizing. In the order of ascending commitment, the categorization includes sharing, cooperating, collaboration, and collective action. Sharing is simple because forming a group on the web is simple (i.e. Facebook) and sharing information merely requires writing the information and sending it to the group. Collective action is obviously the most commitment because the individuals organized have to do all of the three prior to collective action (sharing, cooperate, collaborate) and then actually DO something in order to achieve the collective action.

The book continues to focus on specific examples of organizing as groups and how the Internet has changed the dynamic of being able to communicate with just one person to hundreds of thousands. Specifically, the press had this luxury before, but Shirky points out that the Internet has created a “mass amateurization” of media, a major shift that was only reserved for specific media outlets. Further he shows how there are no longer “obstacles” to communicating one’s point to a large audience in the public. Shirky continues the book highlighting the negatives of the movement, continuing with how the movement can assist in problem solving, and ending with the implications of collective action on a large scale (i.e. country revolutions).

I agree with Shirky for most of his assessment. I believe that the Internet has allowed us to become much more connected to large groups of people and organize massive amounts of people. Whether it’s from his initial example of catching the girl who stole the women’s phone from any other highly publicized case. The web also can shame people into doing the “right thing”. I saw an example of this on a law blog the other day that a young woman sued her ex fiancé (both lawyers) for the pre-wedding damages after he broke up with her (due to his cheating) just weeks before the wedding. This case went from a law blog http://abovethelaw.com/weddings/ to all over the Internet—literally EVERY news outlet. The ex-fiance initially decided to fight it but once it went viral, he quickly settled the case. There were millions of people who viewed him negatively and I believe that the web literally pressured him to do what the general public felt was the “right thing” to do.

I would like to push back on the idea that being able to better organize via the web is actually good for relationship building. I believe there is a clear distinction between the quantity versus quality of the connection. Yes, I agree we can collectively organize. But I also feel that the Internet has decreased “real life” connecting because of the Internet. For example, FB allows us to connect with lots of individuals but often the quality of the actual communication is very weak. Moreover, the web allows us to have easier ways of communicating such as Gchat versus actually talking on the phone or meeting in person. Gchat can be used as an excuse for a good enough way to communicate to friends, when really it is subpar.

This movement is very relevant to my past work experience. I worked on the Obama Campaign and organizing over the web was a critical part of the campaign. Specifically we had to do ALL of the 4 types of communication from sharing all the way to collective action. Collective action was the most important because we needed volunteers to assist in various volunteer activities that were necessary for winning.

I also saw many examples of the difference in how 9/11 has been handled versus 10 years ago (when we did not have Facebook, twitter or many of the other media outlets). For this anniversary, I could read about almost anyone’s thoughts on 9/11. For example, roughly 1/3 or my friends on Facebook commented on their feeling and what they were doing 10 years ago. One of the blogs that we follow for class, Techpresident, featured this for 9/11: http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/911plus10-way-we-look-and-feel-us-all, in which individuals from all over the United States can collect their thoughts on what they were doing on 9/11. September 11 and the feelings/emotions that we have about the events have stayed the same over the past years, however, the way in which we communicate the feelings has allowed the nation to grieve together. The change is profound and clearly due to the mass shift in technology.

Hello world!

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Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

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