Great sessions at the news:rewired conference at Microsoft's swanky headquarters in Victoria. Mind you, I did wonder with it being Microsoft if they keep having to move every six months to overcome irritating problems with the structure that were missed at the designing and building stage.
This was journalism.co.uk's second such conference. The first was in January and was interesting without hitting high notes throughout but this second event buzzed along with a great variety of speakers from the old (former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves) to the very new (Hannah Waldram, The Guardian's Cardiff Beat Blogger).
There's still a lot of assumption from delegates. Many times I heard people say that online has freed the journalists as no-one sits at their desk and churns copy any more. But I'm afraid that I estimate it is still commonplace in 80 per cent of the industry, although no editor or news editor will ever admit it.
I admire enthusiasm and confidence but we should temper it with some reality along the way!
The one speaker I couldn't work out at all was Philip Trippenbach who repeatedly lambasted journalists for being obsessed with the 'story'. You can read his blog through the link and see if you can make more sense of it.
The gist seemed to be that the obsession with the story led to a narrow presentation of complex issues and that a greater use of interactivity - a 'game' in which a user gets to set the budget in a similar way to the classic game Civilisation for example - is a better way of enabling a user to gain an insight into a subject.
I wholeheartedly agree that we need to make a far better use of such interactive tools but cannot see it is a separation from the story. To me the joy of online is the way in which we can use a huge range of multimedia and pose the question 'how would you like to find out about this subject'. The story is a key part of this as are the comments, blogs, video, podcasts, graphics, games etc.
But he spoke with huge passion and intellect so I'll be tracking him down for further debate in the near future.
The subject of paywalls came up again. At the first conference the mere mention of the subject brought a sneer to most of the delegates faces and my suggestion that paywalls may present a workable future for the industry brought forth snorts of derision.
This time however, the tide seemed to have changed with the majority accepting that some form of paywall was inevitable for most sites. It was interesting to see that this sea change had occurred within five months and that no-one seemed to acknowledge there had been a change.
It was enlightening hearing testimony from the likes of The Times's head of online Tom Whitwell and Karl Schneider, head of editorial development at RBI, about their experiences although Murdoch's man was more guarded than a US President on tour in Iraq when it came to revealing figures.
Whitwell, for example, insisted that the paywall enabled his site to focus on quality rather than quantity and put 'the genuine' reader to the forefront of everything they do. 'Genuine' indicated someone who was interested in reading and interacting with the site as opposed to a 'driveby reader', which is a great, if slightly loaded, term for someone who pops in, reads a sentence and leaves without engaging with the site.
Of course, some publishers will go to extreme lengths avoid using the term paywall but whether your charging an app or for a browser subscription, you're still asking for money to let people see your site.
Interesting times ahead.
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