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As Old Media Dies..NowPublic is Born
by phrolen | August 10, 2007 at 12:26 pm | 736 views | 17 comments
by jordan
Imagine hundreds of thousands of freethinking individuals scouring the net bringing the stories that matter to them back to the front of accessible, free, news page; all with a little help from the highlight tool of course. Picture, thousands of caring and loyal citizens from hundreds of countries around the world all heading out to their daily routines, only one thing is different, everyone now slips their digital camera in their bags before they go, there to take photos of news when it happens. Millions of news stories happen around the world every second, and now there is finally a media outlet that could potentially cover them all.
Recent studies have shown that the general public has incredibly soured on the mainstream news media. Polling suggests that people see the media is uncaring, inaccurate, and politically biased. Many feel as if the news is too regulated, by to small of a crowd, and often hampered by corporate political issues. More than half of the respondents surveyed faulted news organizations for failing to stand up for America, and recently the results of some of the polling has been showing up on the bottom lines of gargantuan news conglomerates. It seems more and more everyday westerners are looking for outlets beyond traditional sources.
One such outlet, Now Public, is amassing an army of citizen journalists who have a world of interactive potential at their fingertips. Now this might sound a bit like a 80's infomercial, but I assure you there is no fas paux here. Everyday thousands of us cross all international customs and boundaries to bring the world the magic of crowd powered news. Each nowpublisher brings to the table his or her own set of values, different background, and different personal biases, and through the help of awesome tools like the NP highlight tool and crowd sourcing device, each is able to transcend the traditional news media and place a truly human touch one the once mundane and redundant news cycle. Through it all the voice that begins to emerge is the voice of humanity, telling the world what happened to him or her today; breaking down the traditional corporate barriers to the world of news, one Now Public post at a time.
More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.
More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.
More than half -- 53 percent -- of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for "failing to stand up for America".
Among those who get their news from newspapers and television, criticism of the news organizations was up to 20 percentage points lower than among Internet news audiences, who tend to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole, according to Pew.
The poll indicates an across the board fall in the public's opinion on the news media since 1985, when a similar survey was conducted by Times Mirror, Pew Research said.
"Two decades ago, public attitudes about how news organizations do their job were less negative. Most people believed that news organizations stood up for America... a majority believed that news organizations got the facts straight," Pew said in a report.
The Washington-based Pew Research Center describes itself as a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
News Tools
August 10, 2007 at 12:26 pm by phrolen, 736 views, 17 comments
Author
Crowd Power
jordan
Toronto, Canada
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Comments (17)
at 12:31 on August 10th, 2007
phrolen, this is very insighful. thanks so much.
- reply
ryanat 12:34 on August 10th, 2007
phrolen, you really hit many nails right on the head. an excellent treatise on what we are doing here and how it fits into the 'news world'. Good Stuff.
at 12:38 on August 10th, 2007
Thanks for the great review on NowPublic, what nowpublishers do, and what drives us.
at 14:23 on August 10th, 2007
Dogplotter said (http://www.nowpublic.com/deadly_shooting#comments:)
Why is
lifting a story from
Why is lifting a story from the Sun and posting it on a website considered
"fast" and "keeping people informed"?
**Golly! Here is your answer!**
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larrybat 15:28 on August 10th, 2007
" ... freethinking individuals scouring the net bringing the stories that
matter to them back to the front of accessible, free, news page [my emphasis]; all
with a little help from the highlight tool of course."
Indeed! Nothing wrong with a little pat on the back. Now if you (NowPublic) would actually bring the news back to the front page ... it'd all be good : )
at 15:57 on August 10th, 2007
I wouldn't conribute to NowPublic if I thought my participation helped bring on the demise of Old Media. There is ample room for old and new. Checks and balances apply to the media as well as to government. Let traditional media serve NowPublic contributors as solid sources of information outside of their immediate circle of experiences. And may NowPublic keep the Old Guard on its toes, with a run for its money!
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ryanat 16:04 on August 10th, 2007
indeed, i agree with you...in fact i believe that as media opens up and everyone has a platform to tell the stories of the day it will require that msm take a deeper look at things and provide analysis and context which is the realm of experts and professionals.
at 16:31 on August 10th, 2007
As a prior member of the "Old Media" I feel that mostly what we do on NowPublic is bring lots of stories already out there and put them into one place.
12 years before I retired, I was a photojournalist for a newspaper in Washington state. We created the article about the subjects.
Covering the news, through writing and photography, is a full-time job.
I'm sure there are NowPublic members who do create from scratch information they are posting.
I think by posting on NowPublic we are submitting articles and photos already online on the internet. I feel kind of cheesey using someone else's hard work which is why it is important to give credit to the source of where we got the info - photo or article.
Whenever I have submitted something new, photo and information created by me, I feel the best when I post it to NowPublic.
How many stories would actually be on NowaPublic without the old media doing the "grunt" work for us?
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ryanat 17:18 on August 10th, 2007
Kati,
i think you raise an important point - yes one aspect of NowPublic does utilize the work of msm. however, we do strive to add original content, whether that is in the form of photos, commentary, or perspective to every post on the site.
at 20:53 on August 10th, 2007
When NowPublic is at its best is when a reporter does create something new from scratch (his or her own experience or legwork) and then truly integrates it with relevant material from the Ancien Régime. Then a remarkable hybrid is born with a power all its own. In other words, the best of the "Good Stuff." Long live synthesis and synergy! Off with the heads of plagiarists and spammers!
at 17:08 on August 10th, 2007
"I feel kind of cheesey using someone
else's hard work which is why it is important to give credit to the
source of where we got the info - photo or article."
I wouldn't participate if ensuring credit is given was not first and foremost. I used to work for a pure-internet news source, in fact I was one of the co-founders of the site. As a photographer and a reporter there was nothing that excited me more than to see my article picked up for non-commercial use and be posted elsewhere, with those credits of course.
Now, if it showed up on a site that made money by lets say...selling ads? I generally didn't like it, Google news being the exception. Why? Google brought thousands and thousands of 'eyeballs' to my pictures and articles and to the news-site I worked for..which did make money by selling ads and did pay me for my work.
For the record, I have been contacted directly by one reporter, he thanked me for posting one of his articles on NP.
at 17:38 on August 10th, 2007
phrolen, it's always good to step back and take at look at an innovation as it relates to the rest of the world. I think you've done a good job of putting NowPublic in context. It helps everyone see what they're doing. Thanks.
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kkaeferat 17:47 on August 10th, 2007
phrolen, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 22:11 on August 10th, 2007
The media neglects many stories to concentrate on Paris Hilton and other non-essential news to the rest of the world or even country.
What NowPublic does is let others around the world see what each of us considers important enough to blog about or to Highlight for NowPublic consumption.
Oh, yes, it's great when we can post original stories. but how many original and important stories from local media get neglected by our "international media channels" for the latest thrill? the one that supposedly sells?
If NowPublic is making the media sit up and take notice that not only are we 'not going to take it anymore': what they hand out as "News", but that there are concerned people from around the world who are actually doing something about it, maybe they (the powers behind them) will actually start reporting real news again.
False hope.
Still. NowPublic has the most diversified news, even more than Yahoo or Google provides and all the media channels. Even when it falls prey to Paris and her PR campaigns.
Old media began to die when the corporations started buying up all the independents and news started to become homogenized and then pasturized.
good stuff.
at 22:39 on August 10th, 2007
On the network and cable outlets, the Paris Hilton syndrome has wormed its way into the serious content to the point that it has crowded out meaningful content. Coverage of Asia and Africa seldom happens unless there is an "exotic" or "extreme" aspect to be driven home. The inclusion of Paris Hilton stuff has accelerated to an assumption that the public expects to see it every day, like the next episode of a soap opera. Local newspapers eliminate stories of unique significance and opt to include feed items from syndicated sources instead. These are sad days for information in the Republic, the Dominion and the world. Why on earth do the paparazzi get so much money for the furtive snapshots they snatch from the idle moments of celebrities? Are we the unconscious -- or unwilling -- enablers of these leeches?
But there is good stuff out in the Old Media still to be had, lots of it and written by expert hands from many viewpoints. The important thing is to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. For starters, we should recognize the Paris Hilton outlets as the changelings they are. Some news troll has kidnapped the baby and left a gnome in its place.
To turn away from the New Bad Old Media and to keep your back turned is the first step. Finding the Good Stuff from traditional sources is the second. There are still reporters who have invested their talents, education, experience and conscience into what they do. Some are scholars or artists or scientists in their own right. In other words -- the antithesis of the Paris Hiltons. Some writers are risking their lives to bring back their stories. NowPublic can have no better collaborators than these.
at 11:29 on August 11th, 2007
Thank you all for your comments and sorry I did not jump back in here before now. I have twin 3 year old daughters that are the center of my life and the weekend is there time mostly. I don't think that the NowPublic process is contributing to the Old Media dying. And when I say old media dying I do not mean it the full sense that traditional forms of media ore drying up and will go away, its more of a forced evolution. But case and point, look at the NYT, a huge failure on the part of traditional media heads in recognizing which way the proverbial winds of change were blowing, and that failure to adapt has crushed the circulation of what used to be the world behemoth in daily print. The true change that NowPublic brings is not circumventing old news outlets, but circumventing the limited and often political vetting that goes on in the corporations. Our citizen journalist bring perspectives from across so many spectrums that all corporate vetting walls are thrashed and the end result is a platform where there is potential for, as I said, the voice of humanity to bleed through; telling the world what happened to he or she that day. News is quite literally now a public process. It is no different, in the traditional sense, than say, your local news 8, in the fact that many of the headliners might come from AP, Reuters, or FT, and then there are originals as well as human interest story. The vetting process is where the whole sea of change happens. I assure you, our job as editors entails scouring this page and pulling the interesting stuff to the front, and there is such a wide array of us, personally speaking, that the "Newsroom culture" the certain mold that traditional media smelts its newsroom from is washed away, and left on the surface is a wide array. Conservative, Liberal, Constitutionalist, Green, nonpolitical affiliates and those who care nothing for politics at all only want to live and be happy; This constitutes the ultimate "Fair and Balanced" mixture. No, I am not purporting perfection, humans are imperfect but this wasnt just a pat me on the back session, I believe it was an honest assesment of the potential that NowPublic possesses. Everyone has a chance to become involved. Like with anything, hard work creates empires.
at 11:10 on August 12th, 2007
Right on. My own meandering comments were a pat on the back to NowPublic, which has already established high strandards and goals. They were also a tip of the hat to what is still fine and valuable in the traditional media. And if there was any vitriol in my words, it was aimed entirely at the Paris Hiltony, political biased, trivia-infatuated, news-killing outlets that purvey the same sort of "rubbish" (sic) that Orwell described as mass media in 1984.
Continued good luck with NowPublic, and my best wishes. -- And kudos for such a discussion-rousing article! Good stuff, indeed! [Sometimes I forget to activate the checkmark and leap right into the comment box.]