The Wire
Twenty years ago, worked with a system that linked all the newspapers in New Zealand over a modem network. This was a "packet switch network" - what we worked with before TCP/IP changed how most networking works and created the Internet.
There is a continual friction in the evolution of computer software between central control and remote intelligence. Networking wise. You either have lots of intelligent nodes with their own databases interacting, or you have a design where the bulk of the data is held at one or more central locations.
Both have been shoved aside for the client-server model that works for data exchange by building protocols at the correct level of a stack.
But have we lost something in translation? More important for the media industry, is there an answer in news presentation that is a) not expensive and b) instantly more interesting than what passes today as online news.
What distinguishes news from plain old blogging? Factuality.
News is all information, no muddled thinking about it.
Blogging is all muddled thinking about it, no real information.
So the way to distinguish media "you should read" from media "you should ignore" the media giants have formed a sort of closed information cabal where they share propriety information, or IP if you like. Much of what you read in your local newspaper is similar to what is published in a local newspaper half way across the world.
Facts are just facts. Writing is the art however that a newspaper is selling. The best writing should evolve with a news brand instead in award winning news sites we get snips. Like radio news. Skims over the surface.
"The Web is not a medium for long articles because people's attention span is short..." is just marketing bollocks. The web is not a visual medium. It is hardly just for the consumption of idiots. It is ultimately the greatest economic and academic asset we have.
To evaluate business requirements based on human behaviour is the wrong business model and then charging for what drags the most eyes is really how you run a sports channel.
The news is a differentiated media. It employs entertainment (mainly sports) to gather the larger audience. No longer really reading news, we are instead led by an unexpressed desire for a staged entertainment experience while listening to short pithy headline delivery with surface analysis or interviews.
The news media adopts a media player clip approach to video ("as that is what works on the web, its all eyeballs"). Nothing wrong with that. Like the Apple I, it is a stage of media evolution.
On the other side there is youtube.com and thousands of similar user posted video sites. News does not appear to work on these sites.
Mashing the two together to provide public news bulletins will be done wrong hundreds of times badly before an accurate model for public contributions selectively rewards great content capture. Will this mean a vast network of ipod nano carrying part time journalists? Only when something happens while the reporter is there. But too much shaky low grade video, and it loses its edge. Becomes just more blogware.
It is hardly a business model.
But mashing together the idea that contributors are a competing community who have a market with news rooms is a business model.
To enforce copyright to save the "music industry" is deemed impossible as sharing undermines the economic model. The musicians are turning the economics of the industry upside down by being so cheaply visible on the web.
The real need for record companies is to finance large scale tours, large scale distribution/promotion and provide audio upgrades. Technology will make MP3 an obsolete and hated format. Compressing all the art out of music is just criminal. It is like selling thinned down paint. Bad copies of music are the worst disservice to the artist.
Apple have saved the computer audio industry. The FREE iTunes experience means being able to hear the music. Erase all MP3s and use complete music formats!
Delivering news over the web as a business model is not the same as music. Not at all. Both have made evolutionary blunders in the transition.
"Free" is only best if we did not have an economy. iTunes replaced the old music economy with a greater one. Music is an archival medium. If it can be continually improved, over the net, there is still a rational for music companies who respect or buy artist copyrights.
News delivery is a hot instant medium with many archival background accumulations which can be repackaged and sold as for example Time Life books.
The opportunity for the news media is not just becoming a clearing house of public opinion. It is creating the full framework of an accurate, reliable reportage and matching democratic discussions to political trends with a history machine that is far more focused on detail than the television can be and delivering engaging video on the spot within seconds of real time events.
For the sake of the business model the net should spell an end for syndication. The networks of 20 years ago are no longer appropriate. They now produce bland undifferentiated news stories.
Different titles, different content. The iTunes of journalism will be invented and absorb those who believe the way ahead is to charge for content.
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