Media struggle with growing 'blogosphere': More people are blogging than ever -- particularly young people -- while traditional media grapple with dwindling interest and growing criticism from this tech-savvy share of the public, experts told United Press International.
"What blogging has created is a million eyes watching over the shoulders of journalists," Matthew Felling, media director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, told UPI. [...]
"Blogs are the ultimate reason we are seeing journalism clean house nowadays," Felling said. "If some questionable news-gathering behavior had grown to be tolerated, the blogosphere has put an end to that."
They come to recycle the Old Media, not to bury it: Networks have been running shows about cars, homes, exotic travel and practical jokes for 50 years. (Does no one remember "Candid Camera?") For all their radical chic, MTV's fans are just like the past generations they so desperately want to transcend.
This should serve as a cautionary tale for those who are betting big on the doomsday scenarios being peddled about the implosion of the newspaper industry, as well as to those who await the triumph of the so-called "blogosphere." The more the media seems to change, the more its underlying patterns keep reemerging. There's truly nothing new under the sun. [...]
This may sound like a brave new world, but the idea of writers banding together to put out a joint publication is hardly new. We used to call them "magazines." If history is any guide, the Internet won't kill the traditional media, it will be absorbed by it.
Is the blogging bubble hot - or just hot air? Online, it's a different tale. The trouble is that it's going to be really, really susceptible to the "power law" of networks, which dictates that most traffic goes to very few sites (or phone numbers, or traffic junctions, or music CDs). You get economies of scale almost at once, but loyalty is very hard to earn. There's no cost in changing from reading one blog to another - unlike buying a different magazine.
So a few blogs will garner huge traffic, and others will waft back and forth in the currents of readers' unpredictable interests. The rest of the money will thus be very thinly spread.
Students have lessons for future of U.S. media: Newspapers continue to lose circulation because young people don't read newspapers anymore. [...]
Here's the dirty little secret: Most of these kids say they're not averse to reading newspapers at all, though paying for a newspaper may be another matter.
Make no mistake, these kids get much of their news and information online. But some said they've enjoyed reading the paper since their journalism class required them to do so. A main reason they didn't read it before: It's hard to find one. [...]
"The theory is that accessibility and ease of acquiring the newspaper is really important to this audience, because it's a casual read," said John Murray, vice president of circulation affairs at The Newspaper Association of America. "If you make it easy, they will come."
[Comparem-se com as opiniões no Weblog da disciplina de Cibercultura da Licenciatura em Multimédia do Instituto Superior Miguel Torga, Coimbra, nomeadamente a ficha de trabalho nº6 sobre a questão "will the blogs kill old media?"
Nenhum dos trabalhos refere que partiu de um documento "old media" para escrever num "new media"...
P.S.: Nicole, os jornalistas podem escrever artigos de opinião. Não podem é opinar nas notícias. Por isso o código deontológico especifica: "A distinção entre notícia e opinião deve ficar bem clara aos olhos do público".]
