NousMedia Blog

The Collapse of the Media

2008-11-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

As Dave Winer pointed out in a recent blog post about Changing The Way We Do News, the media is in severe trouble and it is likely that it will collapse before it reinvents itself and finds a new model. Recent reports suggest that even the New York Times, that most venerable of newspapers, is in dire straits. It is running out of cash and perhaps more seriously just lost Vivian Schiller, their head of NYT.com, to be CEO of NPR.

Winer suggests that the role of media in mediating the relationship between the powerful and the populace will not be replaced by bloggers, who are just becoming another branch of the old style media, but by unpaid citizen journalists who will assume part-time roles as volunteer journalists on behalf of the citizens, much like they do jury duty today.

Frankly that seems a little far-fetched to me. When you consider the fact that the average citizen has to be pressed into this type of service with the threat of arrest hanging over their heads, and still fail to show, well, it seems unlikely.

The role of mediator is a critical one, and someone has to take up the mantle. Ideally, as Winer suggests, this will be the citizens rather than the appointed/anointed few. There are ways that this can happen without huge disruption, and that is to let the people interview the people in power.

Mediation and reporting is about asking the right questions and getting answers. We don't need journalists to mediate if we can have direct access to ask those questions. While the media was avoiding asking questions about the war in Iraq beause they were afraid of losing access, the people would have been asking the pertinent questions: what is our exit strategy? why is it costing so much? etc.

We have the ability to let communities ask questions of the people in power. They can vote on what questions are most critical to get answered and be self-moderating. This will also allow the people in power to talk directly to the communities without a media filter. Politics and the media can become local, even on a national scale.

2008-10-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

Old Media, New Media, Nous Media

"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.

These are the roles that make up an interview or Q&A, arguably one of the most effective ways to have discussion online but one that has so far taken place off-line and then transcribed online.

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.

What's the best way to interview online?

2008-10-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Manage and publish interviews online with YouSaidIt

Do you do email interviews?

2008-10-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

Manage and publish interviews online with YouSaidIt

Internet Art with Jenna Montgomery

2008-10-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Manage and publish interviews online with YouSaidIt

Email Interviews

2008-10-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

Manage and publish interviews online with YouSaidIt

Questions For YOU

2008-10-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

Future of Newspapers

2008-10-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Ask Me Anything

2008-10-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

Manage and publish interviews online with YouSaidIt