This post is the first of series I’ll unofficially name:
Books Every Journalist Should Read.
Why?
Just in case you haven’t noticed, we’re well entrenched in a series of upheavals and tumultuous change in the media industry. The Web Happened.
Newspapers – the bastions of the old school media are having to adapt or die. Understanding the web is no longer crucial – it’s mandatory. Do or die style.
Not all the books in this series of posts will focus on the web. I hope to have subsections geared toward interest areas: Political Reporting, Photo/Video/Multi-media (aka “Visual Journalism”), Blogging, etc. We’ll see how this develops in the upcoming months.
First Up: Groundswell
I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that the internet is a conversation. I’ll probably say it many more times. As journalists, authors, media producers, we need to understand not only that the web is a conversation; we also need to understand what this conversation is, in regard to our own slice of the market and how it will support or break our niche in the media of the web.
This book by Forrester Research fellows Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li looks at the groundswell that is e-everything. Although they focus their book on how companies can benefit from engaging in conversations, their ideas can apply equally, with some tweaking to media professions.
What exactly is a groundswell?
The authors call it a “social trend” where people connect to share information outside of the traditional media/corporate structure. Advertising, is typically thought of as shouting about a product or service. Watch a TV commercial, and you’re having the product message loudly communicated at you. But, is that what consumers really want to know?
If you want to know how this book might apply to your life, are you more likely to read the blurb on the Forrester Research website? or flip over to Amazon (linked to the book graphic above) and read the reviews from the previous readers? Some have two stars, some have four or five stars? Why is there a difference? – Seeking out that information exchange, participating in it actively by sharing your own thoughts in a review, or passively by just reading them to reach your own purchasing decision is all part of the groundswell according the Bernoff and Li.
While the book is timeless with it’s approach, it’s focus on the media will need updating every few years. Social networks and platforms will come and go. MySpace is gone, Facebook and WordPress are the current trends, but for how long. Twitter is still around, but are people and companies using it to it’s full potential, and will all of these social platforms last? Or rather, how long will they last without major redevelopment as new social ideas sprout on the web?
I can see how the recent SNAFU or kerfluffle over the JustIN “News Service” for the state of Indiana government, which was recently killed by Governor Pence, had the potential to begin to work within the conversation of the web, and create their own area for communication with the groundswell. Perhaps, that is one of the reasons the media sources in Indiana fought so hard against the fledgling idea? There were other concerns that were valid about the “news service” – but, I can see where traditional media outlets might become concerned that their role as host of the “conversation” was being circumvented by the JustIN proposal. We won’t know, however, if that conversation would have grown, since the plan was scuttled so quickly.
This conversational role of the media is one that all media sources, both the traditional, and the emerging media have to come to grips with to survive. The monopolies of the print media are dead and buried. Those news sources who don’t adapt to Web 2.0 (or even 3.0 as it arrives) will wither and die painful media deaths.
We, as journalists, have to learn and understand about the conversation that the web is, in order to understand how to play a role, and participate as both content providers, as well as consumers in this new media environment. New media has already become established media. The journalists who understand the intricacies of the conversation are the ones who will excel. The ones who have to catch up will hopefully survive in the media environment. Those who dig in their heels, and try to control the conversation as the monopolistic media monoliths used to? We’ll have to see how well they do in the long term.
The web, and now media, is an uncontrolled conversation. Do you know how to be heard? Or, perhaps more importantly, how to listen to it?