"Old media" is the owners of the publishing and distribution apparatus talking to you the audience, or too often at you. New media is evolving and unclear but it appears to be some combination of you being able to do to others as has been done unto you - i.e. you can become your own publisher and talk at people too (much as I am doing now). At it's best new media has been defined as a "conversation" between people, and from that conversation ideally one can extract things of value and meaning.
Well so far that idea has been stretched a tad. After all, comments on a blog, or discussions in a forum are all too often largely garbage. Of course there are many exceptions to this, and those are stand-outs of how great conversations by people who have something to offer can be (which at any given time includes all of us). The problem too often is lack of any structure for the discussion and lack of any roles.
We believe that "New Media" should be "Nous Media" - which is the media of the "us" or "our media" (nous means us/our in French). Nous Media will provide both structure and role to the extent it is helpful, and allow for better discussions. Our starting point is the interview or Q&A. Why? Because these are are very common forms of discussion and interaction which have many uses and bridge the gap between the authoritative structured information of editorial and the unstructured world of "user generated content".
Nous Media has multiple roles:
- The Host - who convenes the discussion around a given topic and keeps it on that topic.
- Interviewee(s) - who may be experts, guests, celebrities or other people of interest. There can be on interviewee or a panel.
- The Interviewer(s) - this may be the host, it may be a professional interviewer or a researcher, it might be the "readers" or "audience".
- The Audience - these are the people who have come to the discussion primarily to listen to the perspective of the interviewee or panel, but also to ask questions and comment on the answers.
If you'd like to learn more about Nous Media, please go to our company - YouSaidIt - and try out our online interviewing and Q&A publishing tools.
