Media Mashups! How Traditional Media Brands Survive and Thrive in a Widely Wired World

The rocky (and very, very costly) tie-up of stodgy Time Warner with sprightly AOL in 1998 seemed to illustrate Raymond Hall’s warning: “All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.”

But this summer's surprise announcement that Old Media News Corporation was shacking up with New Social Network Media MySpace, indicates that even in the most conservative of circles, the apparent taboo of old and new media nuptials is over.

Since then, the 'oldies' have been scrambling to woo young digital operators, in general, and social network companies, in particular. CBS has embraced YouTube (who is, by the way, a partner of Verizon who has, in turn, already hooked up with MTV, ESPN, and ABC News) and the 160-year-old Reuters has tied the knot with 12-year-old Yahoo, who is also linked to baby-faced Flickr.

Of course, not every date has led to the altar: today NTL and ITV formally announced their much-discussed union was not to be.

So, where is this going? Are there any tips to help these relationships flourish? What does it all mean for journalism?

Those are some key issues under the spotlight at the 5th Journalism Leaders Forum coming up at the University of Central Lancashire in February 2007. Paris-based advertising and brand specialist Mark Tungate (left) will chair the discussion of cases and issues entitled: "Media Mashups! How Traditional Media Brands Survive and Thrive in a Widely Wired World". Media convergence expert Jane Singer, the newly-appointed Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism at UCLan, and Heather Hopkins, Hitwise vice president for research, will be amongst the panellists.

The event, which forms part of the Winter residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, February 6th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the network reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders@ukjournalism.org.

• NOTE: Applications are currently being accepted for the Winter seminars, which will include sessions by Hopkins, Singer and Tungate, as well as other accomplished practitioners and academics: Journalism and the Market: Understanding Users, Delivering Value and Principles of Journalism Leadership: Strategy for the Digital Age. Please see the Programme website or email the director François Nel for more information.

Innovation leaders on how they do it: inspiring, empowering

It wasn't much of a risk, really. With a panel comprising Tim Bowdler, Tim Porter, Simon Waldman and Geert-Jan Bogaert and with Keith Sutton as ring-master, the discussion was always going to be provocative. That was indeed the case in the packed auditorium in Preston last night and also in the chat room online (see the excerpt below).

If you missed the discussion on "Leading Innovation: What to Do, How to Do It" - or want to run through it again - check out the recording.

Mark your calendar, too. The 5th Journalism Leaders Forum on February 6th, 2007, will be chaired by Mark Tungate, a Journalism Leaders Programme discussion leader and author of the first comprehensive look at the world's top media brands, Media Monolith. Watch for updates on the event here or mail us at leaders[at]ukjournalism[dot]org for an invitation.

Simon Waldman: At the moment, the most significant revenues onilne are actually derived from advertising...I think the real challenge over the next two to three years is to ensure that everyone is geared up to secure as much ad revenue as possible...
Mark: One of the reasons journalists are negitave to the changes is that they have seldom if ever consulted on how and why the changes should occur
Tim Porter: Correct. That's why more collaboration and cultural change is
needed.
Mark: directives from the top alienate the journalists who often see the changes as principally cost saving methods

Simon Waldman: Mark..you're right..
Simon Waldman: Let's not forget the Telegraph basically laid off a load of
journalists..
Tim Porter: Or ... newspapers tend to pile up priorities until there is a laundry list of goals, most unsupported by training.

Mark: too much money goes in to the technical infrastructur
which is constructed for and by technical staff. The point of departure must be
firsty "how can we tell our stories better"
Tim Porter:
There is a tremendous need for product development -- in a traditional sense --
in the newspaper industry.
Editor: The cultural battle is being won - the key to capitalising on the undoubted revenues out there is to keep traffic high thanks to the quality of journalism
Mark: product is produced by journalists. There is a tremendous need for *journalistic* development
Mark: Swedish statistics show that sanitary workers have more money for mid-career training than journalists

Tim Porter: “Merely riding the current of change, complaining all the while, is a path that leads only to cynicism and failure. It's seductively self-indulgent, but it's just plain wrong. The alternative is choosing to act.
That's leadership. And it's what these times demand.”-- David Zeeck, executive
editor, Tacoma News-Tribune, President, American Society of Newspaper
Editors,2006-07
Julia Ogden: In my opinion the desire to change and adapt to the future is in many of our newsrooms, but I would argue the investment is not - as yet. Is JP planning to roll out new media newsrooms like the one at LEP to other divisions and if so, when?
Mark: so where do the ethical standerds of journalism c0me into play?
Mark: xcuse the spelling :-)
Tim Porter: They remain. The challenge is to change the forms and practicies of journalism without undermining the principles.

Guardian digital director joins international line-up for 4th forum

Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers, has just been added to the programme of the 4th Journalism Leaders Forum to be held on October 17th.

Waldman, who has played a key role in GuardianOnline, will join an international line-up to discuss "Leading Innovation: What to Do, How to Do It.”

In a recent article for the Press Gazette , Waldman said:

It is clear that the ultimate challenge is not simply to build a good web operation, but to build the news organisation of the future. And having your online operation as a remote satellite simply isn’t going to do it. Having said that, the one thing you realise after looking around is that there is no clear model for making it work that everyone can feel comfortable with.

I do predict, however, that in the next five to 10 years will bring a wave of change in newspaper offices around the world as they grapple with this.

Other panellists are:

• Tim Bowdler, chief executive of Johnston Press and the person recently described as “the most powerful figure in Britain’s £3 billion regional newspaper industry”
• Geert-Jan Bogaerts, digital editor of DeVolkskrant, the first fully-integrated multi-media newsroom in The Netherlands
• Tim Porter, associate director of Tomorrow’s Workforce, a Knight Foundation sponsored devoted to professional development in America’s newsrooms, and author of the blog First Draft.

Keith Sutton, past president of the Society of Editors and an Industrial Fellow of the Journalism Leaders Programme, will chair the discussion.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, October 17th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism[do]ac[dot]uk. If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion.

You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Online participants will be able to post questions to panellists in a chat room.

Want to avoid getting drunk on digital?

The Telegraph’s move from Canary Wharf to their new multimedia newsroom in Victoria will make it the UK's first fully integrated multimedia newsroom. Not surprisingly, it has been closely watched and widely – and passionately- discussed.

“I have seen the Telegraph's future, and it works,” gushed GuardianOnline blogger Roy Greenslade recently after a tour of the new facilities. On the other hand, John Carey, NUJ father of the chapel, has railed, “They are tearing the heart out of this paper and each day that goes by they are doing it more and more.”

Under the headline, "The dizzying decline of a great paper," Phillip Delves Broughton, a former Paris correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, today summed up the spectacle this way:

Watching the Telegraph leap into the digital age is like watching a late arrival to a party drinking too much to catch up and then falling over on the dance floor.

The transition from print publishing to multimedia change was never going to be easy. But did it need to be quite this bruising? More than a decade into the 'digital party', are there some things that the Telegraph executives - and other latecomers - could learn from earlier arrivals, such as De Volkskrant in The Netherlands?

Geert-Jan Bogaerts, De Volkskrant's online editor, will speak to the challenges of moving from print to multimedia during the 4th Journalism Leaders Forum in Preston on October 17th.

The panel discussion, 'Leading Innovation: What To Do, How To Do It', will be chaired by Keith Sutton, an award-winning editor and an Industrial Fellow of the Journalism Leaders Programme. Other participants include the person recently described as "the most powerful figure in Britain's £3bn regional newspaper industry," Johnston Press chief executive Tim Bowdler . Tim Porter, an associate director of Tomorrow’s Workforce, a Knight Foundation-sponsored project devoted to professional development in America’s newsrooms, will contribute a pespective from the other side of the Atlantic.

The forum, which forms part of the residential week activities for participants in the Autumn block of the University of Central Lancashire's Journalism Leaders Programme, is also open to the public. To attend this free event at 6pm on Tuesday, October 17th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism.ac.uk .

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion.

You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Better still, do both. And let's get the discussion going.

Tim Porter: newspapers have had their 'collective heads in the ink barrel, ignoring the changing society around them'!

Tim Porter is passionate about journalism. He’s also thinks that if newspapers are to survive as a vehicle for journalism, we need to emphasise a point that many newspaper journalists, particularly newsroom managers, don’t like to hear:

They are responsible for the decline in readership and relevance of newspaper as any of the bugaboos cited routinely as contributing causes - the Internet, pesky bloggers, disinterested youth and that Craig guys from San Francisco.

Why is that? Because risk-averse newsrooms have spent several decades with their collective heads in the ink barrel, ignoring the changing society around them, refusing to embrace new technologies, and defensively adhering to both a rigid internal hierarchy and an inflexible definition of ‘news’ that produces a stenographic form of journalism, one that has stood still, frozen by homage to tradition, while the world has moved on.

Porter believes that it needn’t all be bad news for newspapers. Associate director of Tomorrow's Workforce, a newsroom development project, and author of First Draft, a blog on quality journalism and newsroom innovation, Porter will join the fourth Journalism Leaders Forum on October 17th in Preston.

The panel discussion on "Leading Innovation: what to do, how to do it" will be chaired by Keith Sutton, an award-winning editor and an Industrial Fellow of the Journalism Leaders Programme. Other participants include the person recently described as "the most powerful figure in Britain's £3bn regional newspaper industry," Johnston Press chief executive Tim Bowdler. Other panelists to be confirmed.

The event, which forms part of the residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's new Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, October 17th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism[do]ac[dot]uk. If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Better still, do both. And let's get the discussion going.

Applications are currently being accepted for participation in courses offered by the Journalism Leaders Programme in 2006-7. See the website for details or contact the programme François Nel at FPNel[at]uclan[dot]ac[dot]uk.

Johnston Press CEO on Leading Innovation

Johnston Press has long had a reputation one of the Britain's most profitable media companies. Now CEO Tim Bowdler also wants them to be known as one of the most innovative.

In a presentation this summer to City analysts and investors, Bowdler and his team revealed the UK's second largest local newspaper publisher's plans to transform 70 traditional newsrooms into multi-media operations (with some help from the team at Preston).

Bowdler will join in the fourth Journalism Leaders Forum on October 17th in Preston. The panel discussion on 'Leading Innovation: what to do, how to do it' will be chaired by Keith Sutton, an award-winning editor and an Industrial Fellow of the Journalism Leaders Programme. Other participants are to be confirmed.

The event, which forms part of the residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's new Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age.

To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, October 17th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism.ac.uk .

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Better still, do both. And let's get the discussion going.

Applications are currently being accepted for participation in courses offered by the Journalism Leaders Programme in 2006-7. See the website for details or contact the programme François Nel at FPNel[at]uclan.ac.uk.

Talking money, too.

Someone had to ask it. The where’s-the-money question, that is.

If you missed last night’s Journalism Leaders Forum roundtable on “news as conversation” with Kevin Anderson, the BBC’s 2004 US election blogger who is now on the "World Have Your Say" programme team, it went like this:

Jethro Goko: "I’m glad, Kevin, that you don’t necessarily see a bleak future for print because of blogging. But I do worry about blogging. I can not see a business model for blogging. For me, as long there is no business model and somebody can not make real money, the future looks bleak [for blogging]."

Kevin Anderson: "Well, I think there is two issues and if you are talking strictly about people blogging, there are companies quite happily making money with blog hosting companies. If you are talking about why should you, as a mainstream media outlet, blog. I can give you quite a few compelling reasons...

What I say (and I say this a lot at the BBC) blogs are public interface for a public broadcaster. There is a famous blogger, Robert Scoble, who blogs for Microsoft. And obviously he’s part of their developer network and he says blogging keeps him close to his customer.

For us, blogging keeps us close to our audience. It makes sure that we’re not just off on our own agenda. And I think that is something that we should take on board. That some times there are things our audience wants to hear or talk about, things that aren’t necessarily part of our agenda.

The other thing - and quite honestly it is something that I had an opportunity to do two years ago [when I blogged the 2004 US presidential elections for the BBC] and I haven’t had the opportunity to do, and something I would give my leg for the opportunity to do it-... Blogging is an incredibly powerful news tool.

I can do things, breaking news wise with a blog that I would never be able to do with a newspaper, that I would never be able to do with a radio, that I would never be able to do with television. It’s a missed opportunity. And it enriches our journalism. It returns a responsiveness, it returns a rawness, an immediacy that I think is really somehow missing in our journalism. It is a huge opportunity that is not being met. I think in some ways it’s because a lot of people in the mainstream media don’t understand what blogging actually is or what it represents.

They see it as another opportunity to publish their content. They don’t see it as a way to have a conversation with their audience. Or as a very lightweight powerful tool to publish content from the field and to also take questions from your audience.

Just think if I was on the scene of a breaking story able to publish updates minute by minute that could be pushed out to a network of people who had SMS alerts set up and then they could send me a question and ask me questions directly in the field. That is a powerful relationship with your audience that will make money, that will keep your brand relevant. It is something the mainstream media is not doing. And, quite frankly, it’s a failure on our part."

You can view an unedited recording of the lively discussion here.

Mark your diary, the next forum is scheduled for the week of October 16th. If you want to receive an invitation or e-mail alert, send a note to leadersatukjournalism.org.

We’re still accepting applications to the Principles of Journalism Leadership module this autumn. Check out the participant reviews here - and if you want to join in, you'll find out how on our website.

The Challenge: Make News Conversations Happen

It’s one thing to acknowledge that active, connected information consumers are challenging traditional journalism models by demanding that the news be a conversation not a lecture. It’s quite another to translate that into a regular, viable news product.

That’s exactly what the BBC World Service set out to do with ‘World Have Your Say’ which engages in a ‘global conversation’ every night on the radio between 1800-1900 GMT and 24 hours a day via their website.

Online specialist Kevin Anderson, a key member of the programme team (and contributor to Corante) , will discuss the nitty gritty of making the programme happen - and reflect critically on the lessons learned to date - during the third Journalism Leaders’ Forum at the University of Central Lancashire on May 23rd .

The roundtable discussion chaired by Mike Ward, author of Journalism Online and head of the Department of Journalism at UCLan, forms part of the residential week programme for participants in UCLan’s Journalism Leaders Programme. View the Webcast live from 6pm BST here and join the online chat.

For more information about the Journalism Leaders Programme, read what the participants have had to say or contact the course leader François Nel by email or Skype (francoisnel).

Watch it again: forum webcast recording available

Missed the discussion with Dan Gillmor, Pete Clifton, Cath Hearne, John Fray and Mike Ward on the impact of citizen journalism on the media establishment? Or want to watch it again?

An (unedited) recording of the Journalism Leaders Forum webcast is available HERE.

Of course, we’d welcome your feedback and suggestions for the next forum, which is scheduled for 6:30pm GMT on Tuesday, 23 May 2006, in the same space.

Let's keep the conversation going.

Also read:

• Jemima Kiss at journalism.co.uk
• Paul Bradshaw at Online Journalism Blog

The implications of Citizen Journalism for the Media Establishment

In a digital environment, where news consumers can also be news producers, how should traditional news media respond? Is citizen journalism a threat or an opportunity?

The second Journalism Leaders’ Forum at the University of Central Lancashire on January 31st will bring together exponents of traditional and new media to debate these questions.

Dan Gillmor is author of We the Media. A former US newspaperman, he is one of the web’s leading advocates of grassroots journalism.
Pete Clifton is Editor of BBC News Interactive, responsible for one of the web’s most successful news sites.
Cath Hearne is editor of BBC London’s nightly news programme and was at the helm on July 7th, a day in which some of the most vivid images of the London bombings were contributed by members of the public.
John Fray is Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, which represents 35000 journalists in the UK and Ireland.
And Mike Ward is author of Journalism Online and head of the journalism department at UCLAN.

The debate will be chaired by Nigel Kay, former Head of Journalism Development at the BBC and now an Industrial Fellow at UCLAN. “Traditional journalism stands at the threshold of the digital age, uncertain about what lies ahead,” says Kay. “This discussion will tackle some of those concerns and seek to identify the opportunities.”

The event, which forms part of the residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's new Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges journalists face.

To attend this free programme at 6:30pm on Tuesday, 31st January, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the reception from 5:45pm - please RSVP to FPNel@uclan.ac.uk .

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion. You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/r81768061/.

Better still, do both. And let's get the discussion going.